When Sharpening Your Coutre Don't Neglect Its Tail

Square_peg said:
Yeah, we have a handful here in Pugetropolis planted in parks as ornamentals at the turn of the century. The blight never crossed the Rockies because there are no hosts at high elevation. I've heard other west coast cities have the same.

I sent samples to The American Chestnut Society who confirmed them as American Chestnuts but weren't interested in them for their breeding program.
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Two years ago I bought couple hatchets and cast iron skillet from older Italian fellow. I got into long conversation about Great Depression and 1967 riots. During that chat he told me that most of the houses on his street were unusual high quality built using American Chestnut lumber (he mentioned abundance of that kind of lumber was caused by blight but I did not realized the severity till this thread)
 
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crbnSteeladdict said:
Two years ago I bought couple hatchets and cast iron skillet from older Italian fellow. I got into long conversation about Great Depression and 1967 riots. During that chat he told me that most of the houses on his street were unusual high quality built using American Chestnut lumber (he mention abundance of that kind of lumber was caused by blight but I did not realized the severity till this thread)
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Yes, the story was, "We better cut them all now before they die anyway!" We didn't realize that a certain percentage were resistant. And before we could breed that resistance we cut them all down.

Now they are trying to bring them back by mixing them with resistant Chinese Chestnuts. They won't be the same tree but they'll mostly be American Chestnut and they'll look like American Chestnuts.
 
The mythical qualities of this wood and the extent of the loss was always a kind of background noise from my youth so when my woodworking training began and I found in the old wood lot in Amsterdam's harbor some Sweet chestnut wood it is what I choose for one of my first ever projects, bringing home the two slabs on my bike . Since then I have used it often in a wide range of applications, from fine furniture to flooring,roof shingles, (obviously), to garden gates and fencing to timber framing... and it's really a special wood and beautiful tree, the nuts I'm not so fond of, with its only drawback being that it is prone to those dreaded wind shakes. Well, in places in England and France and Italy etc. there were entire cultures built around cultivating and harvesting and processing this tree. I'm not even surprised, though it is a speculation on my part, if there was not some influence coming from Sweet chestnut cultivation on axe uses and patterns. A favorite film with much axe use which I can't understand but still enjoy watching, “Il Taglio del bosco” occurs in a sweet chestnut coppice.
 
Ernest DuBois said:
The mythical qualities of this wood and the extent of the loss was always a kind of background noise from my youth so when my woodworking training began and I found in the old wood lot in Amsterdam's harbor some Sweet chestnut wood it is what I choose for one of my first ever projects, bringing home the two slabs on my bike . Since then I have used it often in a wide range of applications, from fine furniture to flooring,roof shingles, (obviously), to garden gates and fencing to timber framing... and it's really a special wood and beautiful tree, the nuts I'm not so fond of, with its only drawback being that it is prone to those dreaded wind shakes. Well, in places in England and France and Italy etc. there were entire cultures built around cultivating and harvesting and processing this tree. I'm not even surprised, though it is a speculation on my part, if there was not some influence coming from Sweet chestnut cultivation on axe uses and patterns. A favorite film with much axe use which I can't understand but still enjoy watching, “Il Taglio del bosco” occurs in a sweet chestnut coppice.
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I am heading for the store as my larder is getting a bit bare so I will be watching this movie after I eat tonight. If anyone is interested in the u-tube description here it is translated from Italian:>>> With the participation of the inhabitants of Tirli (GR). Film TV RAI, based on a short story (1954) by Carlo Cassola and written by Marcello Fondato and Giuseppe Lazzari, shot on location, aired 19-9-1963 in the cycle of 9 works Racconti dell'Italia di oggi. It is the simple story of a group of carpenters from the Grosseto area with their problems, individual stories, small and large intimate dramas. It is a realistic genre film at Rossellini where, without falling into landscaping, the importance of the landscape is combined with the psychological subtlety of the characters and with the lucid and critical description of their behavior. "... a phenomenological film that manages to introduce, in the objectivity of the realistic vision, a disturbing moral dimension ..." (Gianni Rondolino). Shot with a sometimes almost documentary style, but not without a dry lyricism, by one of the masters of cinema on television (Vittorio Cottafavi), Il taglio del Bosco represents an extraordinary document on woodcutters and their daily life, besides being one of those rare cases in which the acting of a high school actor blends credibly with that of non-professionals. Noteworthy is the choice of these actors, of the song "Vita as a woodsman" and of the settings, all around the Tirli and Tatti area.
 
Hairy Clipper said:
I am heading for the store as my larder is getting a bit bare so I will be watching this movie after I eat tonight. If anyone is interested in the u-tube description here it is translated from Italian:>>> With the participation of the inhabitants of Tirli (GR). Film TV RAI, based on a short story (1954) by Carlo Cassola and written by Marcello Fondato and Giuseppe Lazzari, shot on location, aired 19-9-1963 in the cycle of 9 works Racconti dell'Italia di oggi. It is the simple story of a group of carpenters from the Grosseto area with their problems, individual stories, small and large intimate dramas. It is a realistic genre film at Rossellini where, without falling into landscaping, the importance of the landscape is combined with the psychological subtlety of the characters and with the lucid and critical description of their behavior. "... a phenomenological film that manages to introduce, in the objectivity of the realistic vision, a disturbing moral dimension ..." (Gianni Rondolino). Shot with a sometimes almost documentary style, but not without a dry lyricism, by one of the masters of cinema on television (Vittorio Cottafavi), Il taglio del Bosco represents an extraordinary document on woodcutters and their daily life, besides being one of those rare cases in which the acting of a high school actor blends credibly with that of non-professionals. Noteworthy is the choice of these actors, of the song "Vita as a woodsman" and of the settings, all around the Tirli and Tatti area.
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Thanks Hairy. Looks very interesting

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I don't know how I missed original link. Thanks E Ernest DuBois
You can click CC to turn on automatic translation from Italian to English.
 
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The thanks should be directed to Ernest DuBois, in his post #24 of this thread he pointed out the video. Miss Bonnie will be looking for something to eat soon and my gizzard will be growling soon after that. So I am still a couple of hours away from being able to watch the video, but, it shall be done.
 
It's good you have solved the mystery of the old house's shingled history.

A chopping block I have from Horse chestnut is near to the end of its chopping block life and with little prospect of replacement will be missed in the end. That wood makes an ideal chopping block in my experience being light-weighted enough to kick from one end of the workshop floor to the other and so resistant to splitting, one reason to avoid making it into firewood and instead cutting to the length you prefer for chopping on. It's all just to say don't discount the utility of woods available to you.
 
It's good you have solved the mystery of the old house's shingled history.

A chopping block I have from Horse chestnut is near to the end of its chopping block life and with little prospect of replacement will be missed in the end. That wood makes an ideal chopping block in my experience being light-weighted enough to kick from one end of the workshop floor to the other and so resistant to splitting, one reason to avoid making it into firewood and instead cutting to the length you prefer for chopping on. It's all just to say don't discount the utility of woods available to you.
 
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