I speculate that prior to circa 1960, most furniture, homes, deco-accessories, etc were constructed of real wood. Real wood was the norm. Nowadays, everything seems to be particle-board, plastic, or some other “junk-man-made” material. If want real wood anything, esp. furniture, you have to shell out big bucks for it. Is real wood is becoming a rarity? So, where is all the real wood going? I know paper mfg. is a big industry today, but is it the major consumer of real wood?
P.S. Where does all the by-product material used to make particle-board come from? There seems to be a never ending supply of “sawdust” to make this garbage. It gives the impression there is more wood by-product, than there is actual wood, available.
A couple of hundred years of clear-cutting has wiped out most of the “good” wood. Good hardwood is hard to find, and is very expensive. The bulk of the trees planted to replace the cut hardwood (if any) is mostly junk softwoods suitable only for pulp and particle board. Hardwood takes too long to grow to be profitable, unless you can cut stuff that’s already grown. And a lot of the “good” wood that’s left is being cut and shipped to Japan to be turned into plywood. It’s sad to see areas that used to be mostly hardwood forest now covered with scrub pine.
Seriously, though, it is difficult to find affordable quality wood furniture. After going through several wall units, coffee tables, etc., I can tell you this: don’t buy that cheap pressed particle shit. You’ll be way better off in the long run by paying extra for real wood. Take care of it, and it will be around a long time.
After we got married, Mrs Wolf and I took all our wedding money and went to the local unfinished furniture store. WAY cheaper than regular furniture, and you can stain it as you like. A little work, but you get the satisfaction of doing it yourself. Our stuff looks pretty good, it won’t warp or chip, and we would have spent twice as much on the finished stuff.
Particle board is manufactured from by-products of other wood milling operations. Pieces that are leftover from logs being milled into lumber, leftover wood from the manufacture and cutting of plywood, etc. Bark is shredded and used for mulch. Some places recover wood from demolition sites, shred it, dye it red, and sell it as mulch. You’d be surprised at how much wood is recycled into sheathing, long-span “I” beams, and decking when mixed with plastic. Most houses are still framed with wood, but there is a growing trend towards steel, especially in areas prone to termites. Housing is still the major wood consumer, with particle board used a lot for roofing.
Our very own National Forest Service clear cuts old growth, and, as KevinB points out, sells much of it to Japan at ridiculously low prices. Japan then turns it into plywood which is sold back to the U.S. at a steep profit. Japan also uses our wood to supply the world with disposable chopsticks. Very important stuff :rolleyes: The NFS is very careful not to clear cut areas that would be visible from touristy highways and byways. Take an aerial tour of parts of our Northwest and you’ll want to puke. Your tax dollars at work.
There is a lot of salvageable wood at the bottom of the Great Lakes (and elsewhere) that sunk in accidents. It’s wonderfully preserved. The State of Michigan has just authorized the recovery of more of it, so there will be more on the market. It’s the stuff that you just can’t get anymore, although it will be awfully expensive.
I am a lifetime member of the International Wood Collectors Society (woo-hoo!) although I wouldn’t know cocobola from honduran mahagony if it bit me on the tuckus. (They automatically include the spouse when one person joins).
Most of the hardwood trees have been chopped down. Growing a new batch of hardwood tree takes a loooonnnnggg time. Most lumber companies now plant soft fast growing pine trees. This still takes years, but the turn around time is faster. People and companies are not inclined to plant trees that will not be harvested until after they (the people) are dead.
Sorry guys, you’re totally wrong about hardwoods. Continuous forest inventory plots performed on a recurring basis by the US Forest Service show that conversion of hardwood to pine is not much of a problem. I’m going to simplify here–but you don’t have enough space for details.
Some lands are suitable for growing pine (most of the South/Southeast). Some lands are suitable for growing hardwoods (bottoms, upland hardwood sites). Some are suitable for either or a mixed stand (loess soils–i.e. wind deposited soils). Pines are being planted at an increasing rate–on pine lands. Most of the new pine lands are agricultural–conversion from marginal or unprofitable crops to timber. This is not “scrub pine” Southern pines are not only the native species for most of the South, but they are also extremely good for framing and other lumber–just not great for pretty furniture. The byproducts of growing lumber is what is used for pulp–the small, supressed trees thinned out during the stand rotation, the poor quality trees, and the sides of the cylindrical log that must be removed to create linear boards. Pine pulp makes cardboard and lower quality papers, hardwoods are used for fine papers, diapers, tencel, etc.
Pine are a fire species. Since fire is so strictly controlled now due to many, many reasons, a real problem is that pine lands are being converted to scrub hardwoods–like blackjack, bluejack, and turkey oak–these trees are useless for quality lumber and aren’t even acceptable for pulpwood unless the mills are truly desperate. This happens because unethical timber pimps find uninformed, stupid or just gullible landowners and either cut all the good timber out and leave the bad or they clearcut and don’t make provisions for natural regeneration or artificial regeneration. Result–No decent seed source, no fire to keep the ground open for reproduction and keep brush from shading out the young natural seedlings so you get a big brush pile that has a few scrubby old pines and poor quality hardwoods. The forestry community has been working on this problem for ages and has made a lot of progress–through education, cost-share programs for regeneration, and tax credits for regeneration and management. People who own land for timber production like corporations ALWAYS regenerate–otherwise they would have their capital tied up in a nonproductive assset.
IN some states, hardwood acres are decreasing–like Louisiana–due largely here to destruction of the marshes and due to development. Let me REALLY EMPHASIZE DEVELOPMENT!!! Golf courses, houses, suburbs, business are swallowing a lot of forestland–especially hardwoods since so many cities have developed along navigable waters or were started in good farm country–most likely bottomlands.
In some states, like Mississippi, the acres of hardwood are increasing–due to programs like the Conservation REserve Program and the Wetlands Reserve Program which pays farmers to put marginal cropland in permanent pasture or plant Hardwoods (on hardwood suitable land!). It’s only been in the last 2 decades that forest industry has developed the machinery to plant acorns in a cost-effective manner.
While I’m at it–let me tell you that research on hardwood silviculture has consistently shown that the way to regenerate the best quality hardwoods–cherrybark oaks, white oaks, green and white ash, etc. is to make large enough openings so that there is sufficent sunlight to allow natural seedlings to grow. In the EAst, there is a change from the “natural hardwood forests” of oaks to shade tolerant maples and hickories because of the poor practice of single tree selection or highgrading. You cannot cut the big trees and leave the little ones to grow. That’s like culling your cattle herd of the biggest, healthiest cattle and leaving the runts/scrubs to reproduce.
As far as old growth–well the cuts on the national forest have been declining at a rapid pace. Since most of the land in the West is public land (unlike the east) the wood supply has shifted–we’re using doug fir and other western species from Canada. We can’t substitute Southern Yellow Pines completely for the western species–they don’t have the same characteristics. Very, very little of the National Forest timber–what little there is being cut–is going overseas to Japan. Most is consumed domestically. If you want to do something to reduce the amount of timber that is being cut–stop building big houses. Stop buying more furniture than you absolutely have to have. Stop replacing perfectly good furniture or houses with bigger, more fashionable models. We grow and harvest timber to meet demand. If there were no demand, that timber would be in the woods. As it is, we have reduced our harvests on government forests due to political pressures and we’re importing woods from countries that don’t practice sustainable forestry–whereas we’ve been practicing sustainable forestry on public lands and corporate lands in this country for generations. Small landowners have a mixed history but there’s a lot of good forest management being done on the small private landowner’s property as well.
Sorry to write a tome–you hit my hot button!
BTW, I forgot to mention–there’s an enormous amount of research being done on hardwood silviculture. We all want to do a better job of growing and managing them.
Some species that are being planted are Black Walnuts, cottonwoods, cherrybark oaks, nutall oaks, green and white ash, sweetgum.
I understand Teak and some other exotics are being grown in plantations overseas. That will reduce demand on “natural” forests.
hardwood and softwood harvesting are completely different processes.
hardwoods do not need to be replanted. There are tons of seeds sitting in the ground, waiting to come up. When you cut enough of the older trees down to light in sunlight … pop!
hardwoods have a healthy lifespan about as long as a human being’s. After 70 years or so, they start to rot out.
Many of the trees standing are no longer alive. They just haven’t fallen over yet.
most of the lumber from hardwoods goes into making skids (those flat cratelike things used to support pallets of merchandise)
We have about a zillion percent more trees now than we did a hundred+ years ago, when virtually the entire northeast (U.S.) was deforested. A drive through heavily wooded PA is sobering–nearly all of that was treeless before we got our heads out of our butts (…and started using more fossil fuels instead of wood/charcoal…oops. Reinsert heads.).
This entire discussion has almost nothing to do with the OP.
Seriously, where has all the wood gone?
A. It’s really, really expensive. Hence, the cheap stuff is reconstructed wood of some sort. Lumber mills try like hell to squeeze every last penny out of the trees, and all of those keen waste-saving measures (more tightly-controlled saw cuts, plywood, particleboard, bark mulch, etc.) are, in large part, efforts to hang on to their slim profit margin.
B. It’s not that good. I don’t mean that in a cynical, plastic-loving kind of way. I LOVE real wood. I’m a bit of a furniture maker myself. But most of the wood you get from trees isn’t suited for perfect lumber. That’s why it goes into making skids. The good parts often come in smaller pieces than we need for, say, a 12-foot dining room table, so the lumber guys just glue all those good, straight-grained bits together to make something more useable.
