damage caused from spikes

tom asked for these photos but i thought i'd post them on the forum. these are estimated to be in excess of 15 years old. thats how long the company i was climbing for has had the contract and they say the trees had never been spiked in that time. cant gaurantee that....but ive been working on the trees on this site personally for 8 years so they defintly havent been spiked in that time.
 

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last one....again i took the surface off a scar. i did this on several scars and each time the damage was only in the bark and hadnt seemed to have entered the wood at all.
 

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Steve,

Thanks for the pics!

Do you have any showing a vertical cross section of the spike wound? Ideally, having a clean cut through both axis of the wound should give a great visual of the damage.
 
What is the tree species? Some trees are much better compartmentalizers than others...this sems to be a good one.
 
heres a cross section as you requested tom, this picture tells a whole different story!
it original wound appears to have held the shape of the initial injury. i counted back the rings from the reaction zone and it looks like its 11 years old.
i sanded it down and stained it with boiled linseed oil to bring out the grain. i have another 6 samples to sand and stain but they'll have to wait till tomorrow.
 

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Steve,

That is perfect! I can see the spike sitting there.

I owe you a pint...at least.

These sort of wounds are out there but they're hard to document.

Having a picture that showed a bit more of the vertical section might illustrate the extent of the CODIT.
 
well this is the original pic before i cropped it...theres a little more to see....this good enough?
 

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I'm not for using spikes on trim jobs, but it does look the tree has healed nicely. I'm sure the spike marks in the tree are not very pretty.

Don't let some cowboy hack see those pictures or they may never want to climb spikeless again.

Chris
 
The pics are great!

Someone could look at the pic and claim that it did little damage and didn't kill the tree. That may be true but it is still unnecessary. Spike wounds are alos entry points for pathogens.

I'm sure that there will be other, worse, pictures of spike wounds.
 
top pictures steve.

sure somone could use the argument that "a" spike wound will heal, but mow many wounds does a tree have to sustain before the amount of damage becomes unacceptable?
 
[ QUOTE ]
I'm sure the spike marks in the tree are not very pretty.



Chris

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to be honest they were not that noticable....they started about 25ft up....i assume he used a ladder to get that high. i might not have picked up on them as old beech wood tend to have lots of markings....but for the fact they spiralled up the tree in the same route that i spiked up
 

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