EXTRA hard wood, petrified!

Autos of beauty

                  Cars of the desert

For today:

When we lived aboard GITMO BAY I was introduced to a ‘type’ of wood called Iron wood. In all my days I figured Oak was the hardest wood growing. I knew Walnut was also hard. I had never heard of Iron wood. Granadillo is a wood native to Cuba. It is probably ten times harder than oak.

 There was a Granadillo pole in our back yard and it was a past time when some of my shipmates came out for dinner, to see who could drive a nail into the pole. No one was ever successful for more than a ¼” penetration before the nail bent. 

Once, with a crowd there and after several guys had tried it, our son Mark said, “Dad, I can do it. We all watched as he sank a #16 penny nail with about 4 hits.” IMPOSSIBLE.  He refused to do it again, once was enough? The little dude had planned this and had used my drill to pre=drill a ¼” hole into the pole in an inconspicuous place. LOL

Well on one of our trips out west I found even harder wood in the Petrified Forest. Trees and wood have always interested me. So on one of our swings around the USA we took time to visit the Petrified Forest. I was amazed at LOGS up to 2 ft. in diameter turned to solid stone.

WE even stayed at an RV park with several complete logs in the campground. It appears when this one fell it broke into 1-3' lengths

 

Nite Shipslog  

PS:  I searched for standing petrified trees on the net, we never saw one. But I found this, in NY state even:
There is a Devonian formation in New York State that contains standing trees. ... The swamp slowly filled in leaving the trees surrounded and buried in mud that turned into rock.
There are many other standing, I just never saw them in person. ;-)      

PS2: My healthy up date. We went to the VA walk in. The Dr. referred me to some guy called GI.  He will call in a couple days to set up what ever them GI's do. BUT on the bright side. I spent today without a pain. Felt as good as new with no pain pills of any kind..  Valentine's day just might be magical!