Found this while using our bandsaw...

[toyotaguy]

I used to work for a very large veneer mill (david r webb co) in Indiana. One day, there was a commotion at the head rig (where round logs are sawed in half lengthwise...aka "flitching"). When I got there, they were digging a kentucky long rifle out. Apparently, "way back when", somebody leaned a rifle against a tree and left it there (I would love to know the "why" on that aspect, and have imagined the possibilities often), and the tree simply grew around it. Needless to say, the saw destroyed the rifle, but it was still cool.

Bullets in trees are a huge problem. So much so, that most commercial mills have huge magnets and metal detectors on their lines.

I've heard rumors about finding rifles and knives and other such things ingrown in trees but never seen pictures of it. We find nails occasionally, but this is our first bullet.

[The Gleam]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that bullet was just pining to be found. However, I bet it never saw you comin'.

[latesvak]

Wow thats pretty cool. Just makes you wonder if it was a dad taking his son/daughter out for some target practice or someone hunting for dinner. Cool pictures

Latesvak

[emtmark]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that bullet was just pining to be found. However, I bet it never saw you comin'.

Groan!

[josh250]

It's to ginger. I was going to say Van Gogh

Your right it looks a lot closer to Van Gogh

[The Gleam]

Groan!

I figured someone wood say that.

[emtmark]

You have to be pretty, board, to waste that much time.

[geeknow]

Toyotaguy,

Lots of bullets. Especially in logs from back East. We've taken old logs from areas that saw action in the Civil War and Revolutionary war that had mini balls in them too. Pretty cool stuff.

You'll see lots of nails (and the surrounding mineral stain) on logs that are near fence lines and roads, because that's where people hang signs.

I've seen barbed wire running through logs too.

Lots of interesting stuff gets buried in there, but my favorites are the old bullets. Makes you wonder about activities that went on there.

[send it_hit]

Whoa, neat!

[Fjold]

You're lucky. My in-laws own sawmills in Ohio and they have destroyed $5,000 radial saw blades on spikes and other metal found in trees. They all have metal detectors before their feed systems to try to detect the metal but sometimes it gets missed until the saw blade hits it.

[Lester53]

That's pretty cool.
Too bad there's no way to know the history.

[toyotaguy]

That's pretty cool.
Too bad there's no way to know the history.

It's fun to speculate though, our property was homesteaded in 1883 and there was a logging camp here in 20s, not to mention that tree boarded the original Big Oak Flat road to Yosemite, which was a stagecoach route then paved road.. so the possibilities of who and when are interesting.

[xjrguy]

I have a big giant oak tree in my yard back east. When I was a kid I threw a good sized chain up on that tree as part of a tree house. Never removed it.

Decades later, it now appears that the chain is actually coming out of the tree after growing around it for so many years.