Look closely at a stump top or a cut in a log and the wood shows real growth rings, off-center and wobbly, wide near the middle, with a softer reddish heartwood. The top of a big tree’s stump is the axe’s flat chopped steps, without the thin spikes that used to stand up over it. The rings read plainly again after a fix.
A chopped lying log is a V of two flat faces, with each blow’s step running straight across it. Fell a big tree so it crashes into a smaller one, and the small one now snaps at its foot and comes down too.
