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TIL my old foreman was right about pruning cuts and it took a rotten oak to prove it
Had a foreman back in 2019 who always nagged me about leaving the branch collar on my cuts. I thought I was being neat by cutting flush to the trunk. Fast forward to March and I am doing a removal on a red oak in a client's yard in Salem, and the trunk had this big old wound from a flush cut I made five years back. Rotted straight into the heartwood, maybe 8 inches deep. The guy had retired by then so I could not even tell him he was right. Now I slow down and look for that little swollen ring at the base of every branch before I pull the saw out. Takes an extra ten seconds and my climbers give me grief for being fussy about it. Anyway I am wondering if anyone else got taught the hard way on this, or was it drilled into you from day one on the crew?
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lee6894h ago
A flush cut on a red oak in Salem isn't proof of anything, one rotten trunk could've just had a bad split or water sitting in it. We flush cut for years on the crew and the trees outlived the guys who planted them.
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