Kirk, the first thing you have to realize is that a tree is a living, breathing hydraulic pump, it moves food and water in a liquid state.
- A
The outer bark is the tree's protection from the outside world. Continually renewed from within, it helps keep out moisture in the rain, and prevents the tree from losing moisture when the air is dry. It insulates against cold and heat and wards off insect enemies
- B
The inner bark, or “phloem”, is pipeline through which food is passed to the rest of the tree. It lives for only a short time, then dies and turns to cork to become part of the protective outer bark.
- C
The cambium cell layer is the growing part of the trunk. It annually produces new bark and new wood in response to hormones that pass down through the phloem with food from the leaves. These hormones, called “auxins”, stimulate growth in cells. Auxins are produced by leaf buds at the ends of branches as soon as they start growing in spring.
- D
Sapwood is the tree's pipeline for water moving up to the leaves. Sapwood is new wood. As newer rings of sapwood are laid down, inner cells lose their vitality and turn to heartwood.
- E
Heartwood is the central, supporting pillar of the tree. Although dead, it will not decay or lose strength while the outer layers are intact. A composite of hollow, needlelike cellulose fibers bound together by a chemical glue called lignin, it is in many ways as strong as steel. A piece 12” long and 1” by 2” in cross section set vertically can support a weight of twenty tons!
You need to pay particular attention to item "D".
I question the advise you received about chopping a tree in the south in June because this is one of the months that your tree's hydraulic system is in overdrive. Pumping water to the leaves for all its worth. When you cut the trunk it doesn't realize that the top is gone till the roots register that there is nothing coming back down the pipe line like excess water.
Like any well operating hydraulic system when the circuit is cut it vents fluid. This manifests itself as water running down the side of the trunk. This water is also under pressure and will blow cut paste off, as well as Vaseline, plumbers putty or any other concoction. I have found that if I "HAVE" to chop, girdling the trunk or branch an inch or so below the chop will almost stop all water loss preserving the trunk or branch.
So what if you loss water from a trunk in summer? Without anything above to register to the plant that it should keep sending water up the pipe line it will close the life line off...conserve its energy. Which in turn usually kills the trunk, only letting the base survive where it is relatively cool and damp. This is why your seeing suckering towards the base.
I would have stuck with your original methods and been patient. I hope that your trunk survives as I'm sure it wasn't cheap. I would suggest two other things. First, if your going to spend substantial bucks on a tree make sure you know tree physiology and what happens if you do something to tree that might have an adverse effect at a given time during the year. Second, look outside your club for advise because what you were told was plain wrong.