I drilled my tree too deep

[arcticcatmatt]

I am a rookie. I tapped a tree before reading up.

I tapped a smaller sugar maple as my first tap and I drilled it 3-4 inches deep.

Tapping season is just about kicked and I am worried about my tree. Is there anything I can do to the hole to help the tree heal?

[tuckermtn]

when you say small, how small in diameter is your tree?

but in general, the tree will heal itself...might take 9 months instead of 6. If its a small healthy tree, you would be surpised how fast it will scab over..

[arcticcatmatt]

I am guessing 20ish inches. I will measure tomorrow.

[RileySugarbush]

It's not going to hurt it much. I've seen arborists drill through and bolt trees that were splitting. I think they do ok. Regardless, there is not really anything you can do from the outside that would help. I have a log split through an old tap hole. All of the healing is a growth of cover over the outside, the depth of the hole should have no affect on how fast it heals.

It will be fine.

[Russell Lampron]

You cant kill a tree by drilling a hole in it. Proctor Research Center did a study where they drilled 100 holes in a tree and it survived. 20" is a pretty good size tree. I don't think you got into the heart with a 4" hole. Don't do anything to the hole it will heal itself. If it was a 4" tree you could hang a bucket on each side.

[arcticcatmatt]

Thanks for the feedback!


You cant kill a tree by drilling a hole in it. Proctor Research Center did a study where they drilled 100 holes in a tree and it survived. 20" is a pretty good size tree. I don't think you got into the heart with a 4" hole. Don't do anything to the hole it will heal itself. If it was a 4" tree you could hang a bucket on each side.

:lol: Thats good. I should take a picture of the tree I saw yesterday. Someone had 6-7 buckets on one tree.

[dano2840]

You cant kill a tree by drilling a hole in it. Proctor Research Center did a study where they drilled 100 holes in a tree and it survived. 20" is a pretty good size tree. I don't think you got into the heart with a 4" hole. Don't do anything to the hole it will heal itself. If it was a 4" tree you could hang a bucket on each side.

you can tap a tree to death, in burr morse's book he tells a story of a guy who had a tree he wanted to get rid of so he hung 50 orr 75 buckets on it off step ladder and i think it was like an 18" tree, and he finally killed it the summer after its 3rd season with 50 buckets on it, but 1 3" or 4" hole WONT HURT IT. My moms boyfriend tapped 50 trees last year and i didnt realise he was going the full lenght of the drill bit about 3 1/2" i flipped out, and yelled at him its not like the old 7/16 bucket spouts where they will only go in so far, man i had a hell of a time trying to pull those health spouts at the end of the season, but my trees are just the same as they always were, so the only way your going to damage your tree is if you calledcutting a wedge out with a chains saw "tapping" it

[Maple Hobo]

New to this myself but my Father in law is an old school maple syrup guy and they are a multi generation family of Syrup producers. So I'm passing on a story and the example I saw in the sugar bush he runs.

He wanted to kill off some small maples that were too close to a larger tree.
He had some extra taps on the line so he decided to tap the small maples and try to kill them. They were only 2-3 inch diameter if that.
Well the small maples he tapped took off and really started to grow faster then the untapped small maples close by. They ARE visable larger, heathlier and doing very well... Not super production trees but they give up some water for the system and the appear to love the abuse.

So he talked to another older school guy who told him "know how they used to bleed you to make you healthy... That actually works with Maple trees."

PS: On the over drilling... An old wood working trick is to pre measure your drill bit and wrap a bit of electrical tape around it (That you probably already have in your pocket for line leaks) at the depth you want to drill. You drill up to the tape band and presto, no over drilling anymore. Some guys will leave a little flap of the tape hanging off so it sweeps the shavings away from the holes.

I've also seen a metal ring with a small set screw to lock it on the drill bit.
Tape is cheap and doesn't damage the drill bits though.

[Thompson's Tree Farm]

Another easy trick....small piece of 5/16 tubing slid over the bit to limit the depth you can go.

[Fred Henderson]

Another trick---- a small block of wood (2"x2") slide it over the bits leaveing exposed what the depth is going to be. When the block bottoms out against the bark the bit will pull out any drill shavings. This will save your arms,shoulders and back.

[Jim Schumacher]

With all of that said, how deep do most of you tap for 5/16 health spiles? Last year I went two inches, that ok?

[dschultz]

Jim,2 inches is ok,I go 2 to 2 1/2 depending on the tree.The hole is a gathering place for the sap to run out of the tap as sap only goes up the outer part of the tree

[Jim Schumacher]

I have always understood that the sapwood was on the far outside of the tree. How thick is the sapwood on, lets say, a sixteen inch diameter sugar maple? When closely looking at a cross-section of the tree (a firewood round) you can see the bark, then a dark colored layer of wood about a half inch thick, then the light colored wood that makes up the majority of the tree. Is the dark layer the sapwood? If so, the tap snuggly fits in the taphole well past the layer of dark wood, sealing it off rather well. If the dark layer is sapwood then how is it able to release sap to the end of the spile. Or is the sapwood not visibly distinguishable from the main body of the tree?

[Russell Lampron]

I was reading an old study done by the Proctor Research Center about tap hole depths and sap flow. They found that for buckets they got the most sap from a tap hole that was 4 inches deep. They tested from an inch deep to 6 inches deep.

[Fred Henderson]

I was chidding some guys at my work a few ago about tapping small trees. I stated that I drilled all the way thru and put a tap on each side.

[Jim Schumacher]

I have always understood that the sapwood was on the far outside of the tree. How thick is the sapwood on, lets say, a sixteen inch diameter sugar maple? When closely looking at a cross-section of the tree (a firewood round) you can see the bark, then a dark colored layer of wood about a half inch thick, then the light colored wood that makes up the majority of the tree. Is the dark layer the sapwood? If so, the tap snuggly fits in the taphole well past the layer of dark wood, sealing it off rather well. If the dark layer is sapwood then how is it able to release sap to the end of the spile. Or is the sapwood not visibly distinguishable from the main body of the tree?

What do you guys think?

[dschultz]

Jim,The light colored wood between the two dark colors is sap wood

[3rdgen.maple]

I was reading an old study done by the Proctor Research Center about tap hole depths and sap flow. They found that for buckets they got the most sap from a tap hole that was 4 inches deep. They tested from an inch deep to 6 inches deep.

What was the results of the tree healing? Or where there any ill effects to the tree down the road?

[ennismaple]

I'm almost certain that when a tree heals it grows over the outside of the hole as it increases in diameter. I don't think the sapwood itself actually closes up internally. Any heartwood you drill out definitely does not heal. Take a look at a maple that's been cut and split and it'll make more sense.

[Thompson's Tree Farm]

I remember reading that study that Russ is talking about. If I recall correctly, the most sap came from the outermost layers, ie. a 2" deep hole did not produce double what a 1" deep hole did. I think that their final recommendation for a good balance between production and tree damage was something like 2 and 1/2 or 3 inches. That being said, I seldom bore more than 2" into the tree and I shoot for 1 and 1/2 (that is wood, not bark). I feel I get good production with vacuum at that depth while limiting the damage to the tree.

[3rdgen.maple]

Ennismaple, I cut up an old dead maple this spring and I purposely cut throught all the tapholes I could find. Most of them were completely closed up and all you could see was staining. Some only closed like you said just around the outside with new growth but the ones that were like that had black grainy powder throughout the whole that remained open. The big simularity was that they all had the dark stain about 2 inches around the old taphole. Looking at this past season tapholes I noticed that all the softmaples were healed over and that the hard maples were still semi opened and some were comlpletely open still. Any one else notice this?

[Fred Henderson]

At the Steam and tractor museum that is being started near here the St Lawrence county maple acc built a sugar house for demo purposes. Someone brought in a piece of lumber that had the tap holes in it and the stains were more than 10 " from each hole. I was always taught to tap at least 6" away from old tap holes.

[Jim Schumacher]

The first year I tapped, 2007, I used 7/16 cast aluminum spiles. All 24 of them are open yet today. In 2008 I used 5/16 health spiles, some are closed and some are still open.

[mtnmeadowmplfarm]

Jim,
The narrow section of dark colored wood, just below the bark, is called the phloem, or inner bark. It is composed of food conducting cells (not to be mistaken with sap conducting cells. The next layer (moving inward) is called the cambium. The cambium is not distinguishable with the naked eye as it is only a single cell in thickness. This layer is responsible for producing the phloem and xylem, the next layer in a tree. The xylem, or sapwood, is the light colored inner portion of a tree. It is composed of vascular cells that transport sap. The xylem is the layer of wood from which sap is extracted. The outer 2" of sapwood transport 90% of the sap in a tree, thus the recommended tapping depth of 1.5-2". As sapwood ages it stops moving sap and becomes part of the heartwood.

As far as taphole closure is concerned, it is my understanding that taphole closure is relative to tree age and health as well as taphole diameter.

[red maples]

just thinking about the Aluminum taps not healing I wonder if it takes longer for those to heal because of the sap reaction to the aluminum. although the acid content of maple sap is generally low it still will lightly affect and eat away some alumnium. If that is the case then I wonder if thats why some tap holes have a wider area of brown staining around the hole.

[3rdgen.maple]

Red you bring up a good point that I will have to watch next year. I use a combo of aluminum and steel taps. I notice that some holes are completely closed up and some are not. One tree I looked at that I know had a aluminum tap in it and a steel tap has one hole closed up and one still open. I wish I remembered which hole had which tap in it. Now I gotta record that next year and find out if there is a relationship to it.

[forester1]

Tapholes close due to growth of the living wood, which is the cambium growing outward. The xylem, or inner white wood, once injured as in a taphole, does not regrow. The rate of closure is due to the growth rate of the tree. Fast growers heal faster. Red Maples grow faster than Sugar maple all things being equal. If your tapholes don't heal in a year you should consider thinning your woods to increase growth.

[gomish]

I remember reading that study that Russ is talking about. If I recall correctly, the most sap came from the outermost layers, ie. a 2" deep hole did not produce double what a 1" deep hole did. I think that their final recommendation for a good balance between production and tree damage was something like 2 and 1/2 or 3 inches. That being said, I seldom bore more than 2" into the tree and I shoot for 1 and 1/2 (that is wood, not bark). I feel I get good production with vacuum at that depth while limiting the damage to the tree.
Has anyone tapped hollow sugars? Have some 14” diameter ones that have hollow trunks. Outer shell seems about 3” thick, all solid around the trunk circumference except for a opening about 4” wide from ground level to 4 ft up, which is where you can look in and see it is hollow. Tapping an inch and a quarter deep should be in the sap wood with solid sap flow without going thru into the hollow? The tree looks healthy otherwise with a nice top for a woods tree.

[TF Maple]

We have one old tree that is hollow and had one tap in it last year and 2 this year. It doesn't produce a lot of sap, but you can have healthy trees that don't produce much too. The first hole we drilled this year was 2 inches and that was too deep, went all the way through, but still has some sap coming out.
I have a tree my cousin wanted tapped and half of one side is rotted away and the one tap on the good side is producing as well as his other trees. They will probably die some time soon anyway so I tap them.

[Riley/MN]

Has anyone tapped hollow sugars? Have some 14” diameter ones that have hollow trunks. Outer shell seems about 3” thick, all solid around the trunk circumference except for a opening about 4” wide from ground level to 4 ft up, which is where you can look in and see it is hollow. Tapping an inch and a quarter deep should be in the sap wood with solid sap flow without going thru into the hollow? The tree looks healthy otherwise with a nice top for a woods tree.

I tap a lot of farmstead soft maples, big old trees. Our best producer last spring split in half this summer. First one big side of a crotch just fell off one day, not windy or anything. The tree was then left way too heavy on the other side and when a little wind came up we lost the other side.

Anyway, there wasn't more than 4" thickness of wood on that tree. The inside was a big, punky sponge....