"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 09:38:20 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:


Here in New Hampshire red oak lasts decades and white oak rots
quickly. I recently cut up a red oak trunk that has been lying on
the
ground in the woods since the mid 90's. Roughly half the cross
sectional area is still too hard to stick a knife into. What rot
there
is penetrated lengthwise much faster than across the grain.

Something is funny there about the oak, Jim. White oak is used in
boatbuilding because the pores will not wick water like a soda
straw,
through capillary action. The pores in white oak are filled with
"tyloses."

Red oak has no tyloses and will wick water. Consequently, red oak
soaks up water, holds it in its pores, and rots easily. White oak
does
not.
It's hard to explain your experience. There is a thousand years of
boatbuilding experience behind the preference for white oak.
Ed Huntress

Boat planks have cut ends and treenail holes that expose the end
grain. The red oak posts of my sheds all rest on flat rocks so they
don't rot like red oak pallets left on the wet ground. I acquired some
old red oak trailer decking that was beat up but not rotted, and piled
firewood on it over one winter. By next summer the bottom planks were
all rotted underneath.

It was a long log and the rot had to penetrate from the ends, one of
which was off the ground. I agree that red oak is a sponge and rot
runs down its grain easily, but it doesn't cross it nearly as fast.
Standing red oak trees that have been dead for maybe 5 years since I
first saw and taped them are only rotted ~1/2" in except near knots
that let rot in deeper. Many showed little or no sign of surface rot
for several years after the bark had fallen off.

Some local(?) fungus gets to the tops of dead white oaks and rots them
downwards and inwards, while dead red oaks rot in the heartwood from
the ground up. I would have saved good white oak logs for my sawmill
but I never found a dead one before it went bad. In winter live and
newly dead trees look alike, in summer the leafy branches conceal the
leafless ones except from directly below.

The property owners only let me cut dead and fallen trees, so I spent
a lot of time looking for and marking standing dead ones.

jsw