"Gordon Arnaut" wrote

One of the biggest dangers in using wood as a structural material is
compression failures that are almost invisible to the naked eye. A piece
of
wood that has been severely stressed (such as sitting under some big heavy
boxes on the UPS truck) may look perfectly good, but its fibers may be
have
completely lost their strength.
???????????????????????????????????/

You HAVE to be totally kidding. Unless that wood was sitting under a 10,000
lbs box on the UPS truck, it WILL NOT get compressive failure like that.

Most compressive fractures take place when the tree is felled, and lands
across a swag, or on another log.

You had a pretty good writing going, but you lost all credibility, with that
last line of crap.

Also, rupture is not the only mode of failure that is important. You have
to know if the part you are replacing is in tension, compression, bending,
or what. There are different values for each mode.
--
Jim in NC