I will begin by adding my feelings, these are open to criticism and opinion of course, my intent is to only ensure healthy forests and ecosystems AND at the same be able to work with this healthy forest and ecosystem to get materials for the craft of timber framing.

Tree Sizes sustained (long-term economics) and Forest maturity encouraged (ecological and aesthetic reasons).
1. Top-sizes of trees need to be maintained or increased to old-growth characteristics of the local bioregion with each and every harvest.

Top Soil preserved, maintained, protected and increased, not eroded.
1. Stand diversity and eneven stand management preferred over mono-culture and clear-cut management.
2. Ratio of filtered light reaching forest floor maintained.

Symbiotic relationship of animals and insects recognized, understood and respected (ecological and aesthetic reasons which leads to long term economic reasons).
1. Each cut-block needs to have marked and clearly labelled all nurse trees (seed bearing trees), habitat trees (standing dead trees that house full strata of insect populations and nesting birds that feed off of insect populations, and dead-down trees (large dead down for moisture conservation in times of drought).

Recognition that like our fish, this is a finite natural resource, and there needs to be a cap/ceiling put on consumption.
1. Merv Wilkinson measured the basal metabolic rate of his woodlot (the volome of wood that grew in one year). From this number he decided to cut 80% of it and leave 20% "in the bank." He did this selectively and followed the rules as outlined above. When his quota was met for the year, if there was not enough money in the bank to get by, he sold eggs, other produce from his garden, worked with his hands, got by and sat down with pencil and wife to figure out how to do it better next year. His forest is a testimony to this type of responsible lifestyle. (Read Wendell Berry for more understanding of it or 'Small is Beautiful' by economist E.F. Schumaker.

Please excuse any errors or ignorances i may have admitted. This is open to correction in the pursuit of truth and honest, hard work. Hopefully we can come to some sort of list and agreement as to what a working forest should look like for us timber framers.

Hi Michael,

Beautifully stated and probably wholly appropriate for your part of Western Canada where the Pacific coast forest is comprised mainly of coniferous (exotic) tree species. Your reference to Merv Wilkinson is not misplaced and its a shame that he is no longer available in person to articulate his views and experience but thankfully the model of his endeavour lives on in his woodlot.

I would draw your attention to a few other observations made in the "olde country" that you might like to consider. Examinations made in oak timber framed buildings that are between 4 - 600 years old reveals that the trees employed for construction of same were not particularly old (50 - 100 years) and these trees are demonstrated to have been grown quite densely to increase production rates of specicific building components like rafters, studs, plates and the like. The notion that older is better might well be true for coniferous trees but it is not necessarily true for deciduous trees where younger trees are proven to be fit for purpose. Big trees occupy a large space within the forest with an enforced long wait to harvest. There is no guarantee after say a 250 year wait that the contents and quality of the wood within the log will be good and useable. The bigger the log the more one is forced to adopt mechanical means to extract and convert trees into timber scantlings where grain flow might also not necessarily match the optimum pattern needed to ensure good long term performance (e.g. jowl posts) in a timber framed building. As a woodland owner I do not have 250 years to wait for a harvest and discovered to my cost a few years ago when the biggest tree in our woodland came down across a public highway in a storm (14 ft girth) that this was unceremoniously cut up and scavenged by the local farmers for firewood. I got no return at all on this large volume tree that had taken over 165 years to grow to magnificent proportions.

If man chooses to interfere in nature's domain then all management techniques will be a compromise and hence management plans need to be driven by clearly stated and well thought through objectives recognising that with the passage of time that market demand might force changes upon those objectives. For example, the market for the production of beech chair legs (bodging) was spawned, grew up and died all within one man's lifetime but the legacy of beech woodland remains with almost no takers today for this once much used general interior purpose timber. What to do ? Do we cut down the beech trees and replace them with oak since that is the tree that is now very much in demand today and if we do how long should we be expected to wait for a harvest and when we eventually get to that point will there be a market for those trees or will they simply grow into senescence and become a perfect bug habitat ?

Our medieval ancestors used woodlands in a way that that would be difficult for us to replicate today since the basic chain of demand, supply and regrowth has been broken. It probably won't be till the oil runs out that a more holistic approach to woodland management will return.

Regards

Ken Hume

I don't know if my post is in the correct thread in this section or not.

But from my personal experiences some 28 years ago, when I was actively logging, we were taught by the local county forester to thin a woodlot, harvesting at that time for firewood for the land owner, to remove the four "D's". And those were dead, diseased, deformed and dominate.

If the tree was dead it was a danger to us as we drove our small tractor through the woods that we could disturb the rotten root system and therefore knock the tree over onto ourselves.
I do understand the need for trees to host bugs for birds but safety should come first.

If the tree was showing some disease then it wasn't healthy and should be removed.

If the tree was deformed, by some act of another tree falling on it or by growing non straight then it was to be removed to make room for other straight trees to grow.

If the tree was a dominate tree, that the crown was larger than all other crowns around it. And this tree was taller than most in the canopy then it was to be removed to make room so that the remaining canopy was even in height.

We were taught to look at a perfect shaped tree of the right height and look at it's crown in the canopy. Then remove all other trees whose branches interfered with this crown and leave a four foot space between this tree's crown and all other good tree crowns around it. This would allow the sunlight to reach the forest floor. And with the forest floor being in sunlight new growth could sprout up into the under story.

This system is more of a set of methods then a policy, I guess.
But this is what we did and we did turn many acres of woods, into forests.

I'd be interested in hearing your comments on this method or system.

Jim Rogers

PS: I would also like to add that, we were told, the results of these methods would be that the remaining trees would grow 10 times faster and larger without the competition from the trees we removed...

Hello Ken,
Thanks for your reply, I wonder if you remember me visiting you a few years back. You showed me the old church which was around during the plague, it had the beautiful big bade crucks visible at the back-side of the church (if memory serves me correct).

Anyways, yes there needs to be two policies. One for decidous forests and one for coniferous. There will some overlap of course. The protection of top-soil for example.

I am wondering if the abundance of smaller trees in England were due to the Romans clear-cutting for their ships etc.? The notion is that older is not better. The notion is that older is an integral part of the system. I like how the traditional Chinese medical system sees the body as a flow of energy (chi) as it sees the earth as a flow of energy (chi), there is no fundamental difference. If this is true, then old is to be respected and have its deserved place in the family. Just because you are older than me and cannot lift or work as vigorously (assumption), it does not follow that we should have nothing but young whipper snappers in the system and cull the old ones. There is obvious wisdom in the older "trees" and are necessary to the health of the overall symbiosis.
As a woodland owner the long-term success of your woodlot hangs in the balance of your understanding the short and the long term goals. There should be some parts of your woodlot that should wait for harvest long passed your death, don't you think? This is the unselfish compromise that Merv is heralded for. He did not drift-net his supply of fish to near extinction. He left some fish for other generations.
To cut down the beech trees and replace them with oak is to repeat the same mistake. The mistake being that of short-sightedness and mono-culture. I think the painful lesson is to slowly/quickly return the beech tree-farm to a natural state, meaning return diversity to the tree-farm to allow it to become a functioning ecosystem and at the same time a working forest. Diversity is the fail-safe operative when in doubt. All not only survive, but thrive in a state of diversity.
We can only be the change, that we want to see.

Hello Jim,
Safety is important, however so is health of the forest. I was amazed at watching the Japanese timber framers at the couple workshops and rendezvous. They wore nylon/cotton ninja boots while they were working. All around them were local carpenters in their clunky steel toes, tripping over timbers and the like. The Japanese workers were so focussed and ever mindful of their position that there was never an accident or trip or bump. Working in the forest is no different. The working forests i've worked in go like this: Every one entering a working forest knows where the standing dead habitat trees are. They are shown them and they are clearly marked. They are not allowed to lean over working trails or roads, others are selected that pose the least hazzard. If I am working in the drop-zone of the dead habitat tree, I am working so as to always have it in my sight. If this is not possible (it usually is) then I will get a piece of heavy machinery (skidder/buncher) to do the work for me.

One reason for bug problems in forests is when these big habitat trees are taken away the large nesting birds leave to find another habitat. A biologist at the University of Victoria studied these large dead trees and found that EVERY bug in the ecosystem lived in the tree and did so at a certain elevation, EVERY bird in the ecosystem lived in/on the tree and did so at a certain elevation (usually from smallest (tit-mouse/chickadee etc.) to biggest (pilleated woodpecker, eagle etc.) from forest floor to tree top. This pattern occured without deviation throughout the forest. Once these big dead trees were removed, the "condominium/city" of symbiotic balance was destroyed, bugs spread to other living trees, and the largest of the bug eating birds left the ecosystem. Loss of diversity and health to the forest. Therefore a balance is struck. For safety all dead trees are to be removed except for one per acre, this being the one that is obviously the "condo" of the bunch. You start noticing this when you start looking for it.

Yes, it appears good to remove diseased, and deforemd trees to let the healthier ones compete for resources. It is also important to document what the disease was in the ecosystem map to see if any patterns emerge. It is also nice to leave some deformed trees for local builders (i.e. cruck frames, curved beams and braces) and to keep with the model of diversity.

Again unless someone can come up with an argument against diversity, it seems to be the fail-safe model to fall back on. If diversity is true, then some but not all dominant trees should be removed. In uneven stand management you want to have maximum diversity of age. It is usually the case that one of the largest trees is the nurse tree. Which means it has the seed bearing cone (not all cones produce seeds) and is responsible for reforesting the area. Merv discovered through his 60 years that these trees replanted the forest at a much higher success rate than him (and he had one less thing to do). He noticed that the squirrels and chipmunks would go to only certain trees and there would be piles of cone shavings around the base of certain trees. These trees had the seeds in the cones and were the "nurse/mother" trees replanting the area. They were marked and labelled so to never be harvested.

Sunlight needs to reach the forest floor, however it needs to be filtered and not direct. There can be some direct but filtered is always preferable for the health of the forest. Yes, the trees grow faster with direct light, however, this can be seen as the forests attempt to shelter the top soil. It may seem to be a good thing in short-term economics, however to the timber framer and wood worker, a tree with tight growth rings is much preferred over a tree with .25" growth rings.

I think overall the system is great, and the evolution of it is the right way to go. It is selection logging which is, as far as i can tell, the best long-term economic and environmental technology for the forest and the wood worker.

I agree in principal with all of your points, I feel i'm being less dichotomous in practice with the principals and finding the balance. After my too many years in University, I left with a head full of black and white, and over the years have kept coming back to one word: "both." Oddly enought it works, the answer to most arguments is "both." There is no right and wrong, outright. There is a grey area where the truth seems to like to hide. This i guess is the paradox the poets like to speak of.

Thanks for your comments....

I do agree with much of whats been said. I did have some pics on the computer that might help with some of what's been said.

These are Red oak. One is fast grown, one is slow grown "old growth". Ring porous woods that are slow grown have a larger proportion of vessels, are less dense and weaker than faster grown.


These are Dougfir, the tags are the specific gravity. The strength of conifers is related to the percentage of latewood.

The relationship between rate of growth and density in conifers is not direct. Neither tight nor loose is what one is looking for if strength is the goal, a high percentage of latewood equals strength. There may be other criteria than strength too.

One thought I've been having with the talk of pollution, deforestation, resource depletion, sustainability. Why are we still subsidizing childbirth instead of taxing it?

Hi Michael,

I have not fogotten you nor our memorable trip to visit Hartley Wespall church. I used this church as one of my assignment buildings whilst doing my Master's at the Weald & Downland (Bournemouth University) and I am pleased to report that the west wall has now been repaired and conserved in a most appropriate and sensitive fashion. I shall send you a digi pic of the finished article. Anyone else who wants to see this can email me.

Re your reply to Jim - once again I am overwhealmed by the straightforward common sense approach that you proclaim. When I purchased my woodland I noted on the agents sheet that it contained beech trees and Norwegian spruce. I have yet to find a Norwegian spruce but there are certainly beech trees and 23 other different types of tree thrown in for good measure. I liked your comments about the squirrels and cone piles. I have seen these in our woodland under Douglas fir but rather stupidly never did manage to make the conect that these particlar trees might provide the best source of seed. We tend to view our imported North American squirrels as pests. They don't appear to have many natural predators here and so wreak havoc on beech and sycamore trees by indulging in bark stripping to eat the cambium layer during late spring / early summer. Though this is certainly a very destructive trait of the squirrel it is also in a perverse sort of way nature's solution to our problem of overstocked beech. I have been removing very badly damaged young (40 - 50 years) beech trees and am now able to see that there is actaully quite a quantity of young oak growing in the mix that is now freed up to put on some plastic growth to fill the gaps.

It is difficult for us to state with any degree of certainty about how our land was transformed after the last ice age into what can be seen today. Systematic archeological excavations are now required in London before major construction projects and this is beginning to reveal more about the timber building practices during the Roman occupation era. The best places to find timber building remains appears to be close to the river where the water and heavy clay acts as a preservative but that is a topic for discussion elsewhere on the forum.

Regards

Ken Hume

Thanks Don for that information. I am surprised at that, but it does made some sense I suppose. I guess it begs the question, what are the benefits of tight growth rings? I once heard that in old times, the timber framer in Bavaria, favored the trees that grew on the north slope of the valley (the side of the that faced north) as this is where the slowest growing trees were with the tightest rings. My experience has been that the trees that come from a southern facing slope are faster growing and chase the sun more which causes tension to build in the tree which is where you see spiral checking (esp. bavarian rule of twist). The trees from the north facing slope do not chase the sun as much and tend to have tighter growth rings and less spiral checking. Can anyone verify or help me with this theory?

Thanks again Don for this.
Pardon my ignorance but is latewood the growth accrued in the late summer/fall before dormancy (after the run of sap in the spring/early summer), is it accrued in dormancy or when? What is it exactly that makes the early wood weak?
Also, if one is to talk of pollution, deforestation, resource depletion, and sustainability, one needs to also address consumption. Population and consumption are directly linked to these concepts. All plants should be allowed to produce seed. Death and correction of population blooms are a natural process to respect and honor.