153 Hard to Source Woods

Happy Halloween! Let's explore some lumber and tree lore from around the world and some spooky tales that may make you think twice before you cut down that tree or plane that board for your next project.

The featured lumber species today is Catalpa. A very oak like tree but with a really soft workability. High quality, clear lumber that is easy to work and comes in decent widths and lengths. Why doesn't this wood more popular? Also on the show, Tree of Heaven as lumber and the engineered wood products world of PSL, LSL, and LVL.

Today I fight my strong wood bias and take time to talk about composite lumber. All the various plastic boards you will find on the market from wood flour and plastic slurry to polyethylene capped boards and fully plastic HDPE or PVC. What you should know about the differences and how you can actually work with this stuff.

My featured species this episode is Buckeye. Its a non commercial species but not terribly hard to find and has some unique color and high propensity to form burls. But the real meat of this show is a look at how a forest regenerates after a disturbance like a fire or logging. The successional forest model helps us understand how forestry managers can foster a healthy forest through logging. But then we look at how bugs and blights can disrupt the succession model even further.

How do you find unusual and typically non commercial wood species? In this episode I give some tips to help the listener build a network of wood sources.

Monkeypod is a great timber coming out of Costa Rica that is almost entirely FSC. It is often sold as wider slabs due to the lighter weight and the way it is sawn in the jungle. A great alternative to many of the tropical species out there like Koa and Blackwood or even some of the fancy Rosewoods.

Let's define plantations and natural forests and talk about what we can expects from the lumber coming from plantations. Also how plantations can evolve into natural forests. Ultimately why do we need plantations and why do we need natural forests. Also answer some questions about air drying and dealing with bugs as well as drying large timbers.

It could be said that Hickory built America. Hickory's properties made the American felling axe possible with its extremely high MOR and MOE values. Today we discuss this great American wood and why you need to add it to your repertoire of woods.

Douglas Fir is a species we find everywhere. So much so that we may not even know we are looking at it. It has two distinctly different markets: construction lumber and fine (very fine) lumber for cladding, decking, soffits, and even furniture. The species has had a rebirth of late and is outcompeting Western Red Cedar in the forests.

What are the markets for the common species of lumber you find at your hardwood lumber dealer. I delve into who is buying what and for what. Plus further discussion about logging in national forest land, wood movement and heat, buying veneer, and harvesting Boxwood.