What I found in my Ash!

This was completely inside an 18" or so round. I was working around it breaking off junks. When I split the left over middle I heard a metallic jingle noise. Luckily, the noise made me stop and look so I was able to avoid a direct hit. I scrounged this wood with a friend who mills with his Alaskan mill. We work together, he mills the big straight stuff and I get the rest. This round came from only a few feet from the section he milled. We lucked out twice, but not milling through it and second time by not bucking through it either. It would have made quite a mess of his nice, new 38" ripping chain.

That split won't fit in the stove door with that darn bolt sticking out of it!

I think it is a 1/2" bolt. It doesn't really make sense to me what it was for now that I think of it. There is a nut and washer on it, but no other material there. Unless whatever was bolted to the tree rotted away and the tree just grew around the bolt. How old would an 18" or so Ash tree be? This round came out of the first 6 feet of the tree, I'm not sure where in those six feet though.

I don't remember where it was exactly. The tree was on the ground when we got there. Between cutting the wood, carrying it to the truck, unloading and stacking at the house and them splitting a month later all I know is that it was from the bottom 6 or so feet of the tree.

Possibly, but the only people I know who would want to converse about it are here at hearth.com.

That's what I was thinking. It was in a lightly wooded area behind some houses that looked about 30 or so years old.