greenwood

[Astrodada]

yes wood does have a life of their own......I think if hard wood cracks....they need a longer time to dry at higher humidity........but ....satori I agree with you whole heartedly.......

 

[Yvsa]

Interesting Do you mean they use the angle inherent in the wood as the angle in an angled brace ? It gives "don,t fight mother nature" a new shade of meaning .

Yep, that's it exactly. Any other way and there wasn't any wood strong enough to hold up to the torque placed upon the special piece of structure.
I can't recall the ship that was one of the last ones or the last one to be restored but the best I can remember they had to have some old trees cut and the structual braces especially made to suit the task they were designed for.

 

[ddean]

"beams that changed directions was cut from the crotch wood of the old trees "


Recently saw a program on Discovery channel (?History channel)
on roman (?viking) shipbuilding

They showed & explained that very point--
finding wood growth that matches the angles required in the ship



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[jamesraykenney]

<snip>

The heartwood is impregnated with sap that, over the years, hardened up just like epoxy. If you were to remove a chunk of that wood you'd find that it looks and feels like very hard plastic. Axes and khukuris bounce off the stuff, and if all you've got is a 'hawk or hatchet, don't even waste your time - just find another source of wood. If you do have the time and the calories to spare, and you chop through it, you'll find that your blade is too hot to touch afterwards.


<snip>
but now that I think about it, petrified pine wouldn't be bad either. (Naturally stabilized wood? I can't imagine this stuff absorbing water...)

Isn't that the same stuff that makes GREAT fire starters?
Light it and it burns HOT and does not go out easily

 

[munk]

I've found sap wood isn't neccesarily found in the heart wood. It can pool anywhere along the tree, it seems to me. I've found that enriched, hardened, firestarting wood in seperate limbs, joints of limbs, trunks, roots and heart wood. I mostly cut Lodgepole and Ponderosa Pine.



munk

 

[ddean]

" heartwood is impregnated with sap that, over the years, hardened up "

"Isn't that the same stuff that makes GREAT fire starters"


And yet another program that was on cable this year

On history of Japanese Sumi art

described how the best ink is made from

soot from the heartwood of old pine(?) trees

the pieces of heartwood hand-selected for appropriate quality.

genereal ref re sumi / sumi-e :
http://www.kuretake.co.jp/corp-e/sumi/index.html
http://www.artpaper.com/TrueBlue/tecksumi.html



Another interesting note;

in China (probably elsewhere too)
there are references to the similarity of

handling a brush
&
handling a sword



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[Thomas Linton]

I have three trees in my yard that lose their leaves in the Fall but are not, I think, classified as "hardwood" -- a Dawn Redwood, a Bald Cypress, and a Japanese Larch.

I think I looked into this once and found that "hardwood" is any non-conifer.

That does not lessen Yvsa's point that some pretty soft woods are "hardwood." Yellow Poplar seems softer to me than Southern yellow Pine (Sure seems that way when driving nails with a hammer.), but the pine is "softwood" and the poplar "hardwood."

Now, where do we put Ginko?

 

[cndrm]

Well, as Satori stated earlier, Pine is classified as a softwood. But if it's old, and long since dead, then it's like trying to cut through petrified wood (i.e. rock!). I have lots of poplar in my yard and in the surrounding woods. It's in the same family as cottonwood, so it's soft (when green). But, if you go to any Home Depot, or Lowes, and go to the "hardwoods" lumber section, then you'll find poplar boards right next to oak. (?) A little puzzling I guess, until you think about the pine. (and yet oak is considered a soft wood because it's an evergreen???). Somebody really needs to revise all this good stuff.


mike

 

[Thomas Linton]

A little puzzling I guess, until you think about the pine. (and yet oak is considered a soft wood because it's an evergreen???). Somebody really needs to revise all this good stuff.


mike

I think Yvsa's point was that Live Oak is evergreen and yet is not a softwood (evergreen does not equal softwood).

Yellow Poplar ("Tulip Tree"; Liriodendrin tulipifera), the "poplar" of Victorian furniture (takes stains very well), is more closely related to the Magnolia.