Why Your Board Turned Into a Hockey Stick

Here is a tree fact. When a conifer leans, it grows a different kind of wood on the downhill side to push itself back upright. It is called compression wood, and it means the tree has basically been doing a pushup for 80 years.

Doug fir does this a lot. It rarely grows on flat ground. It comes out of steep hillsides sideways and then has to turn and grow up, so that wood is loaded like a spring. Then we cut the log open and act surprised when the board immediately turns into a hockey stick. Nature warned us, and we did not listen.

How to spot it

You can see it on the end of a log if you know what to look for. The rings are not centered, and the middle of the tree sits off to one side.

What we do about it

The sawyer reads every log and decides what gets cut where, so a piece with that kind of tension in it does not become your ridge beam. That is also why the crew on the mill makes the call on the lumber, not the sales desk. And it is why limbs are not saw logs: a limb is that same kind of wood from start to finish.

Every log is different. Some of them are just more different than others.