Speaker 1: This delightful program is brought to you by Squarespace. Beautiful
Speaker 1: websites for beautiful beverages like kombucha dog dot com. I
Speaker 1: guess kombucha means black mushroom tea, but it's much more
Speaker 1: fun to say kombucha. Like chicken chimmy chonga. I never
Speaker 1: really wanted chimmi chenga. I'd just like to ask, how's
Speaker 1: the chicken chimmy chonga. There are two takeaways from what
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin just said. One, this show is brought to
Speaker 1: you by Squarespace, and to Alec Baldwin called, are so delightful.
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know Groomhouse Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there, post nasal
Speaker 1: drip some sort, and that makes this stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: It makes this room the infection zone. Oh, Jerry, are
Speaker 1: you sick? No, she's not sick. Are you no good?
Speaker 1: She's just snotty. That's fine as long as she's not sick.
Speaker 1: Are you sick? No? Man? How are you feeling great? Good?
Speaker 1: You're tired? Are you well? Your dad all dads are tired,
Speaker 1: aren't they. That's nothing to do with it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: why are you tiring? Just Uh, I didn't get enough
Speaker 1: to sleep last night. Okay, but not because dad's We'll
Speaker 1: leave it at that for building a wall. Let's back
Speaker 1: away from that question, shall we instead? Chuck take my
Speaker 1: hand and let's wander off into the forest. Uh this
Speaker 1: is pretty neat. I gotta say. I was excited about
Speaker 1: this because A it's dense like a forest. B it's
Speaker 1: cool like a forest. And see, it provides a great
Speaker 1: canopy over our heads. It does a canopy of knowledge.
Speaker 1: I reverse engineered that last one. Oh yeah, man, he
Speaker 1: is on a roll. We're gonna get a few. We're
Speaker 1: gonna get some stuff wrong on this one. I don't
Speaker 1: know that's correct. I feel like anytime we tackle something
Speaker 1: that's in any industry like this, the people in the
Speaker 1: industry are going to have way better current information than
Speaker 1: we will. So I think it's funny because I picked
Speaker 1: up on the same thing, not just with the industry,
Speaker 1: but also with the battle over UM forestry rights. This
Speaker 1: is a minefield, my friends. It really is. Because I
Speaker 1: I this This UM article was written a number of
Speaker 1: years back and it's very friendly to the forestry industry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not like extraordinarily conservation minded um, as far as
Speaker 1: I'm concerned. Yeah, Well, I don't think I had to
Speaker 1: drop a bombshell. No, I don't think I had a slant.
Speaker 1: I saw it is pretty neutral. I don't know man
Speaker 1: like um. But here's how confused I was. And we'll
Speaker 1: get to this later. But these initiatives and certification programs,
Speaker 1: we'll get to later. I didn't know like which one
Speaker 1: I should like and not like. At the end, I
Speaker 1: can tell you, well, save it all right? Does that
Speaker 1: need somebody to tell me what to like and not? Like?
Speaker 1: I can tell you just save it all right. I'm saving.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about forests in general, Chuck, Yes, uh, well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about our country a little bit in the
Speaker 1: United States. Well, even more, let's talk about our continent,
Speaker 1: North America. That's right. When settlers came over here, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of trees. There were a lot of trees.
Speaker 1: Do you remember in our pigeon episode, like the idea
Speaker 1: that there are so many what was the passenger pigeons
Speaker 1: that that died off that were just driven to extinction
Speaker 1: because of humans. I'm pretty sure was pas I got
Speaker 1: confused in the episode about which it was very confusing. Thing.
Speaker 1: And they think that ultimately the pigeons had been managed
Speaker 1: by Native Americans who were wiped out by disease, so
Speaker 1: that when the first Europeans really came along they saw
Speaker 1: tons of pigeons. Places over roam with pigeons because there
Speaker 1: was no one there to hunt anymore. Right, same thing
Speaker 1: with the forest. They think there was so much forest
Speaker 1: cover that it was because the Native Americans who had
Speaker 1: managed the forest four had all died off, largely died off,
Speaker 1: and then what we thought was just this crazy stretch
Speaker 1: of forest that had always been there. It was actually
Speaker 1: fairly new. But it's probably not the case. Well at
Speaker 1: any rate. Way back in the six Dreds, about of
Speaker 1: land north of Mexico was trees. Yeah, not too bad. No,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of trees. Uh. And trees are great
Speaker 1: because they give us wood. I mean they led to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, pre metal. It was all about wood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, ships, buildings, houses, wagons. William Harris, who wrote
Speaker 1: this article, Yeah, it makes the very smart point that
Speaker 1: we came and cut down trees and basically built a
Speaker 1: new nation, certainly a new economy, settle new nations out
Speaker 1: of what definitely for sure like literally out of wood.
Speaker 1: If you're talking the world and Planet Earth about is
Speaker 1: forest land and Russia and Brazil lead the way because
Speaker 1: they have huge tracts of land. Yeah, but as a continent,
Speaker 1: actually Europe is the most. They have the most forest
Speaker 1: of any the most dense. I believe that they have
Speaker 1: one thousand and one million, which is a little over
Speaker 1: a billion hectares hectars point four acres. Right, the total
Speaker 1: number of acreage if you're in the US of forest
Speaker 1: land throughout the world one point five eight billion acres
Speaker 1: of forests. Is that the most broad definition of the
Speaker 1: forest that includes everything, And that's in the US. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's the world one billions in the world. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: in the US there if you if you talk to
Speaker 1: a forester, they will say, everyone thinks that you see
Speaker 1: a bunch of trees and that's a forest. But they
Speaker 1: would narrow down that death finition to at least one
Speaker 1: acre of land which has at least ten percent tree cover.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty that's a good definition for a forest.
Speaker 1: I'm on board with that. Well, if you're talking that definition,
Speaker 1: then the US has about seven hundred and fifty million
Speaker 1: acres uh, seven sixty six in Canada. And uh, that's
Speaker 1: that's forest, my friend. Boom, we're done. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a minefield, but we navigate it. But this is about
Speaker 1: timber and that's different than for us. It is different
Speaker 1: than for us. So a forest is that definition that
Speaker 1: you just said. It's an acre of land with ten
Speaker 1: percent tree cover. Right. Timberland is a type of forest land,
Speaker 1: but it has to have a certain amount of usable
Speaker 1: um trees on it or timber to make it timberland. Right.
Speaker 1: I grew up in a forest actually, now that I
Speaker 1: think about it, Oh yeah, by that definition. Nice. What
Speaker 1: was it called. It's called Chuck's House Chuck's House forest? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was. I think we had We had
Speaker 1: like an acre and a half and most of it
Speaker 1: was trees, so more than ten percent. Oh yeah, easy.
Speaker 1: So you had a dense forest. It was pretty dense.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Did you learn to climb trees out there? No?
Speaker 1: But I used to get poked fun at because it
Speaker 1: didn't grow up in a neighborhood like most kids. It
Speaker 1: was just a street with like six houses in the forests.
Speaker 1: Who would make fun of you for that. What were
Speaker 1: they saying, Well, you know, it's cool to grow up
Speaker 1: in a neighborhood when in the eighties. Hey man, I
Speaker 1: grew up in a neighborhood in the eighties. It wasn't
Speaker 1: that great. I was jealous, man, because everyone else would
Speaker 1: sneak out at night and then go to their friend's house.
Speaker 1: And they were swimming pools and tennis courts and communist
Speaker 1: centers and it was just like me and my brother
Speaker 1: in woods. But I guess I can. I got older
Speaker 1: and everyone was like, dude, your house is awesome. You
Speaker 1: live out in the middle of the woods. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: plus you're lucky to have your brother to hang out with.
Speaker 1: He's a great guy. True, yeah, good point. So you
Speaker 1: know I had a door that led out to the
Speaker 1: back porch. Was growing up. It's like, there's no sneaking out.
Speaker 1: I just opened the door and went out from my room,
Speaker 1: just like, go ahead, come and go as you please. No,
Speaker 1: I wasn't supposed to, but there wasn't a lot of
Speaker 1: sneaking involved. It was opening the door and quietly closing it.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to. I always wanted to shimmy up
Speaker 1: a drain pipe to my room. Have you shimmying up
Speaker 1: or down? Down is a lot easier than not that
Speaker 1: I could have shimmied when I was ten or twelve, though,
Speaker 1: ain't no shimmy in anymore. We're so people have sent
Speaker 1: in that guide posts cover. Is that you know? It's
Speaker 1: just some other playing the trumpet? Yeah? I never played
Speaker 1: the trumpet. It doesn't look like you, but I was
Speaker 1: like now, and it may not have been a four
Speaker 1: piece picture, but I think it was. Someone will find it,
Speaker 1: I hope. So okay, so let's get back to timberland.
Speaker 1: Timberland is a forest that's capable of growing something like
Speaker 1: twenty cubic feet of commercial wood per acre per year.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's it. Uh And um, people estimate two
Speaker 1: thirds of our nation is forest land. Uh and five
Speaker 1: hundred and two million acres of that is timberland. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not bad, not bad at all. Now. So the
Speaker 1: key here, though is, and this is where the big
Speaker 1: debate comes up. We're not going to get into it
Speaker 1: necessarily now, but the key is that, yes, you can
Speaker 1: have a forest that is capable of growing twenty cubic
Speaker 1: feet of commercial grade lumber timber a year. Um. But
Speaker 1: you also wanted to be able to regrow sustainable harvesting. Right,
Speaker 1: So what you're after is what's called the net annual increase.
Speaker 1: This article calls it an annual gain. That's wrong. It's
Speaker 1: a net annual increase, which means that the amount of
Speaker 1: stuff you're growing in a given year is more than
Speaker 1: what you're harvesting. Difference between the gain and an increase,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying the industry term. Yeah. I looked up
Speaker 1: net industry gain or yeah, net annual gain and they
Speaker 1: said you must be city folk, right, it increase. Uh,
Speaker 1: so that you just basically it's pretty simple. You just
Speaker 1: want to take less trees than you're growing in a
Speaker 1: particular year, or that you have than you have in reserve.
Speaker 1: And um, actually, the United States is has been in
Speaker 1: an annual gain for for decades now. Like it's a
Speaker 1: it's a real concern and to cause for worry that
Speaker 1: we over over harvest trees, well, we used to man
Speaker 1: that we DeForest, but if you look at the historical data,
Speaker 1: we are growing more trees than we're taking, um every year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the stat was since the nineteen Since nineteen
Speaker 1: we haven't made anything worse, right, And apparently, and since
Speaker 1: the fifties we've gotten way better. I think those four
Speaker 1: times the seventies were like kind of bad, but I
Speaker 1: think that was like the the transition decade. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what this made me really appreciate we're early conservationist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because postal of a war and during prefous civil war
Speaker 1: even people just sort of took what they wanted and
Speaker 1: did what they wanted with the land. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of foresight, and so early conservationists were really fighting
Speaker 1: an uphill battle back then. I think. So I just
Speaker 1: have a lot of respect for them to say, you
Speaker 1: know what, I don't know if this is smart, what's
Speaker 1: gonna happen in a hundred years. It's like, I know,
Speaker 1: you need your log cabin, Jebediah. What's mind boggling to
Speaker 1: me is that that debate still goes on. Yeah, that's true,
Speaker 1: you know, but even just with timber, with like climate
Speaker 1: in general, climate change things like that. Agreed. All right,
Speaker 1: So if you're a scientist, you're gonna classify forest usually
Speaker 1: by what kind of trees are there. Um, for instance,
Speaker 1: a tropical rainforest you're gonna have broad leaf evergreens, a
Speaker 1: boreal forest you're gonna have needle leaf evergreens. Then there's
Speaker 1: a temperate forest, which is like what we have here
Speaker 1: in the southeast. Yeah. And and the US are five
Speaker 1: major regions specific Coast, Rocky Mountain, North, South, and I
Speaker 1: love it. Alaska has its own region, yes, just because
Speaker 1: it's it deserves it, and there's a lot of trees
Speaker 1: up there. Yeah. And in fact, there's been a little
Speaker 1: bit of a scandal recently as far as Alaska and
Speaker 1: trees go. Are you gonna is that a tease? It's
Speaker 1: a tease, Okay. But we're gonna consider a couple of
Speaker 1: regions here, and we're gonna mainly be talking about the
Speaker 1: United States because that's where we live. Yeah, but there
Speaker 1: are trees everywhere. Yeah, and you can apply this to
Speaker 1: a lot of places. But east of the Old Mississippi
Speaker 1: is the hardwood region and west is softwood. And if
Speaker 1: you're talking hardwood, gums, maples, oaks, walnut, very hardwood walnut there. Actually,
Speaker 1: now I think about I think mahogany is a tropical
Speaker 1: rainforest tree, is it? Yeah? I'm an idiot, all right, No,
Speaker 1: you know that's what I get for coming up with
Speaker 1: something on my own. Uh, soft woods you're talking pine, um, spruce, hemlock,
Speaker 1: douglas for redwoods. Those are soft woods. And we're just
Speaker 1: getting started. There's a lot of information coming your way.
Speaker 1: Should we take a break here? Should be? I don't know.
Speaker 1: It sounded like you were working out towards that. That
Speaker 1: was a break he set up, wouldn't it? All right,
Speaker 1: let's take a break. We'll come back and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about why wood is good? All right? What is good?
Speaker 1: Because you can use it for lots of stuff, which
Speaker 1: we'll talk about. And I didn't realize this that we've
Speaker 1: been using it for a very long time, one at
Speaker 1: least one and a half million years, right, starting with
Speaker 1: fire and like clubs, and yeah, did you realize that
Speaker 1: we'd harnessed fire that many years ago? I don't know
Speaker 1: if I ever really thought about it. It has a
Speaker 1: long time for people to be building fires a million
Speaker 1: and a half years ago. That that completely reche It's
Speaker 1: my ideas of hominids from one point five million years ago.
Speaker 1: What do you think about them before? Not that they
Speaker 1: could create fire. They're a bunch of cold dopes a
Speaker 1: little bit so maybe that they just kind of may
Speaker 1: do with what came their way rather than actually making fire.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, we should do a podcast on the
Speaker 1: origins of fire. We did, you went on fire? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't think we covered like the first fires,
Speaker 1: did we? Or did we? Probably not? Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I've since seen Quest for Fire, which we've talked about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good movie. I kind of want to talk about my
Speaker 1: favorite part, but this is a family podcast, so I won't. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's it's pretty brutal in a lot of ways, isn't it?
Speaker 1: All right? So why is wood good? Um? Like I said,
Speaker 1: you can make stuff out of it. Another big thing
Speaker 1: is carbon sequestration, which is why you hear a lot
Speaker 1: of people battling clear cutting for us because carbon sequestration
Speaker 1: is great. It traps carbon, so the build up of
Speaker 1: CEO two is reduced. As a matter of fact, trees
Speaker 1: count for se of the organic carbon locked in the earth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why that canopy is is important, right. Uh. They
Speaker 1: also provide habitats for all our animals and birds and
Speaker 1: insects and all the plants and good things that we love.
Speaker 1: And uh the hydrologic cycle, souh. A forest will help
Speaker 1: soak up rainfall and filter the water as it becomes groundwater.
Speaker 1: All very important stuff. Yeah, if you like drinking water,
Speaker 1: you can thank trees for helping keep the soil in
Speaker 1: tip top shape to uh filter out all that nasty stuff. So, yes,
Speaker 1: forests are extraordinarily important, right, what is good? But you
Speaker 1: also can make pretty good use of it too, Like
Speaker 1: if you're a clever primate like we humans are, who
Speaker 1: you cannot only use it for fire, which a lot
Speaker 1: of people still do around the world. Fire wood is
Speaker 1: still of um huge um use of wood of timber
Speaker 1: around the world. Nothing beats a natural wood fire in
Speaker 1: a fireplace in your home. No, it's true, you know,
Speaker 1: but um do you remember when we were when we
Speaker 1: shot those Toyota, those Toyota videos that Carnegie melon, And
Speaker 1: one of the innovation things was like a filter, like
Speaker 1: an easy, cheap portable filter for cooking fires, indoor cooking fires,
Speaker 1: remember that, because that was a big problem people were
Speaker 1: like making using wood fires to cook with, but they
Speaker 1: were doing it indoors and like suffering all sorts of
Speaker 1: lung problems. And that still happens in uh, you know,
Speaker 1: non industrialized nations. Yes, is that what we call things?
Speaker 1: It's the it says, it's the prime, it's the primary
Speaker 1: fuel for cooking and heating and developing countries non industrialized,
Speaker 1: I think that's even better. All right. So, uh here
Speaker 1: in the U. S. O. And and a lot of
Speaker 1: countries these days, only seven percent of timber is used
Speaker 1: for um, I guess heating and cooking. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: big push against even that seven percent to Really it's
Speaker 1: just such a I agree with you that firefires, but
Speaker 1: it's wasteful. Yes, okay, Well I don't have a working fireplace,
Speaker 1: so I just like them, you just like the idea
Speaker 1: of it. Well, I want one, but I have one
Speaker 1: of those old, you know houses from the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: that it's expensive to get it retrofitted. Have you ever
Speaker 1: gotten an estimate on it? Yeah, I need chimney work.
Speaker 1: I need a bigger firebox. They said something like eight
Speaker 1: or ten grand. The guy like tried to talk me
Speaker 1: out of it. The dude, I was like, you don't
Speaker 1: want to make money like I want to fire And
Speaker 1: you're like, I don't know, it's pretty expensive. I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: All right, it's wasteful. Uh So seven percent goes toward
Speaker 1: that lumber, which we'll get to in a minute, is
Speaker 1: about fifty three in the u S. September. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: most of that goes to new house construction. It turns
Speaker 1: out that makes sense pulp and paper or and then uh,
Speaker 1: composites like ap plywooden veneer the other seven. Right, Although
Speaker 1: I think we're missing one percentage point, aren't we? Or
Speaker 1: are we? Yeah? I wonder what that is. It's the
Speaker 1: mystery percent, the mystery percent. God knows what they're doing
Speaker 1: to that one percent of wood. All right? So I
Speaker 1: said the word lumber, and lumber isn't just cut wood. No,
Speaker 1: just like timberland isn't just forest. Forest isn't just timberland. Right,
Speaker 1: Lumber is actually a specific thing. It is wood that
Speaker 1: is squared or rectangular. So when you go to the
Speaker 1: hardware store and you see all the two by fours
Speaker 1: and two by sixes and all that stuff, that is lumber.
Speaker 1: Because it's sure if you point to a post around
Speaker 1: post and go give me three of the lumbers, we'll say, boy,
Speaker 1: where did you come from? Yeah, you're wrong on a
Speaker 1: couple of points here. So that's called roundwood. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that that's not included in lumber. That's
Speaker 1: at nitpicky if you're outside the industry. I think say,
Speaker 1: I agree with you wholeheartedly, but if someone points that out,
Speaker 1: then I don't know, punch him in the face with
Speaker 1: the two by four. That's not that's not lumber, that's
Speaker 1: round with Remember hack saw Jim Duggan, didn't he attack
Speaker 1: people with the two by four and the w WF
Speaker 1: I didn't want a ton of wrestling. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: he had like a two by four. That makes sense.
Speaker 1: It's violent. Uh, construction, it's about a fifty fifty split
Speaker 1: with lumber. Um in the US, about half goes to
Speaker 1: construction and about half goes to palettes, crates and furniture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what. I didn't know it would be that high.
Speaker 1: I read an extraordinarily interesting article on the pallette trade.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's there's like a whole cartel controlling palelettes
Speaker 1: that people rebel against and um there's like palette thieves
Speaker 1: and counterfeitters and its like just it's a really interesting art.
Speaker 1: I'll see if I can find it. I'll post it
Speaker 1: in the podcast page for this. Well, pallettes, you and um,
Speaker 1: you can make a lot of cool things out of pallets,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people are finding other uses. So
Speaker 1: they think you can just go behind the grocery store
Speaker 1: and take them. So now a lot of places have
Speaker 1: big signs that are like, do not take these pallets. No,
Speaker 1: especially if they're blue, Like, that's stealing. If they're blue paletts,
Speaker 1: you you can get the place where you stole them
Speaker 1: from sued. Yeah, that's the saying. If the palette is blue,
Speaker 1: it's not for you because you'll get sued. Uh. Furniture.
Speaker 1: If you make furniture, you're gonna like hardwood like oak
Speaker 1: and maple, because it's durable and it has that lovely
Speaker 1: grain that we all love so much. The softwood is
Speaker 1: no slouch either. No, but palletts are used in hardwood
Speaker 1: too because it's sturdy, right, But yeah, softwood is a
Speaker 1: different deal. Now. They usually use softwood for construction lumber
Speaker 1: to because it contains fewer knots and things like that.
Speaker 1: And actually softwood is used chuck more form construction lumber
Speaker 1: because you can make it long and straight, which is
Speaker 1: that's how you want your construction lumber, long and straight.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants like kind of a topsy turvy house. It
Speaker 1: could be a crazy person, but most people don't. They
Speaker 1: want straight, plumb houses. Yeah, although it's tough. If you've
Speaker 1: ever done a home reno project to find straight lumber
Speaker 1: these days, is that right? Yeah? You go in there
Speaker 1: and they're they all seem like they're warped and bent.
Speaker 1: And if you're yeah, and if you're a amateur like me,
Speaker 1: it doesn't help you out any if your lumber is
Speaker 1: not straight. Now you want straight? M Like, I don't
Speaker 1: know how to make up for that. Like my buddy
Speaker 1: Isaac in Kansas help me do my house. He would
Speaker 1: go pick out stuff and I would say, this is curved.
Speaker 1: He'd be like, I can account for that, huh, But
Speaker 1: I can't. He's got like a special organ in his brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's called smarts, construction carpentery smarts. Okay, so that's lumber, right, Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: You can also make paper out of wood. This might
Speaker 1: be the fact of the podcast. If you're ready for this,
Speaker 1: paper is made out of wood. I thought you had
Speaker 1: something else you got me. Have we done one on
Speaker 1: paper before? Because this seems awfully familiar. No, but I
Speaker 1: will say this touched off like five different topics that
Speaker 1: we should cover, paper being one of them all the
Speaker 1: origin ifier paper? What else? Um? Deforestation in earnest we're
Speaker 1: gonna touch on it. But and then there was a
Speaker 1: couple of more I think pornography just kidding. Um, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about the uh cellular structure of wood because
Speaker 1: it's very important. Well, especially when you're talking about paper
Speaker 1: like that was not just a non sequitor, it actually
Speaker 1: makes sense exactly. So trees like everything else, are made
Speaker 1: of cells, correct, And when you take enough of these
Speaker 1: cells and stack them together, you can create something as
Speaker 1: strong and tall and rigid as a tree. But it
Speaker 1: takes a certain kind cell to make a tree. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: the cells. If you think of the walls of the cells,
Speaker 1: they make the tree strong. And there are a couple
Speaker 1: of chemicals that make up these walls, cellulose and lignant.
Speaker 1: And cellulose is flexible and bindy, and lignan says no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm your glue. Cellulos I'm gonna keep you, um more
Speaker 1: rigid because I don't want you to bend. So they
Speaker 1: work together to make whether cellulus likes it or not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I always wondered about that. It has to go along
Speaker 1: with it. It's like I wanted to bend. Lignan get
Speaker 1: out of my face, right, is like no, no coloring
Speaker 1: outside the lines. Uh. So if you separate those things,
Speaker 1: which we've been doing for a long time now, you
Speaker 1: can get those cellulose fibers and actually make something called
Speaker 1: pulp which will eventually make paper, right, and you can
Speaker 1: form it into a mate press and dry it and
Speaker 1: bleach it and turn it into paper. Like you said,
Speaker 1: you can also make other stuff too, um, technically fiber board,
Speaker 1: you know, the stuff that they used to put on
Speaker 1: the back of dressers and things these days. Uh crude. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's actually made from paper pulp. Um. If you're if
Speaker 1: you're at another hardware store and some guy that works there,
Speaker 1: lady says, what you want to use as m DF
Speaker 1: medium density fiber board, and that way they won't think
Speaker 1: your city folk. You can say yeah, MDF, sure totally,
Speaker 1: and then they'll know your city folk, like, give me
Speaker 1: three of those mds. Uh. And then you have hard board.
Speaker 1: And that's even stronger than fiber board. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: just I think it's harder because it's pressed together with
Speaker 1: so much pressure. It's more dense. Yeah. Fiber board is
Speaker 1: pulp and glue press the press together. Hard board is
Speaker 1: the same thing, but pressed together, like you said, under
Speaker 1: pressure and then completely different. Actually, although it does seem
Speaker 1: like it would bear a pretty striking resemblance. Is um
Speaker 1: particle board, right, Yes, these are composites. Plywood and particle
Speaker 1: boarder both composites, but they are different. The difference between
Speaker 1: MDF and particle board is MDF is. Uh. Well, particle
Speaker 1: board is cheaper and it's made out of sawdust, whereas
Speaker 1: the MDF is is made of actual fiber right out
Speaker 1: of pulp. Yeah, does that make sense? Yeah, Like Chuck,
Speaker 1: you realize that stuff you should know has hit such
Speaker 1: a stride, but we're talking about particle board. It just
Speaker 1: hit me. Plywood is when you take If you look
Speaker 1: at plywood and on the side of it, you'll see
Speaker 1: that it's a lot of little veneers pressed together. They're
Speaker 1: called veneers veneers. Plywood is great, but if you really
Speaker 1: want something that's just as tough, just as durable, but cheaper,
Speaker 1: you're gonna go for the oriented strand board OSB baby,
Speaker 1: which is basically like plywood made out of particle board. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's all but replaced plywood in construction these days,
Speaker 1: home construction because it's cheaper, Uh, it is stronger and
Speaker 1: more durable, and I was wondering why it was stronger,
Speaker 1: and it's because it comes from It's right there in
Speaker 1: the name. It's oriented. The specific orientation of the wood
Speaker 1: strands makes makes it stronger. So it's not just haphazardly
Speaker 1: tossed together. Impressed, I guess by God, specifically oriented invented nine.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah in California, I think. Actually, so your OSB,
Speaker 1: if you go into your hardware store and they'll say
Speaker 1: you either want M D F or os B, say,
Speaker 1: I know what I'm talking about, So don't try and
Speaker 1: don't try and trick me. Right, I didn't just fall
Speaker 1: off of the turn of the lumber truck. All right,
Speaker 1: where are we now? Are we harvesting it? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: to get to this point, to get to all this
Speaker 1: wonderful products of umber, timber. Sorry, man, I have a
Speaker 1: lot of trouble not confusing lumber with timber. The lumber
Speaker 1: is timber. Timber is not necessarily lumber. That's what I
Speaker 1: was taught as a young boy. So when you harvest timber,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of approaches, right and um, well, there's
Speaker 1: several approaches, but they really fall under two umbrellas. One
Speaker 1: is that take everything to hell with ecology approach called
Speaker 1: clear cutting. That is, all these trees can make some money. Ergo,
Speaker 1: I'm going to cut down all these trees. Yeah, Typically
Speaker 1: over five acres is a clear cut. Yes, anything under
Speaker 1: that it's called a patch cut, although people disagree on
Speaker 1: that definition too. But the suggestion is that under five
Speaker 1: acres an area that small could recover. Being effectively clear cut.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure has to do with recovery. Oh, it
Speaker 1: has to do with the amount of money made. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm not sure, all right. But with clear cutting,
Speaker 1: you just go in and you cut down everything. It's
Speaker 1: um it's pretty straightforward. Really, Uh, it takes slightly more
Speaker 1: thought to come up with a good what's called the
Speaker 1: silver culture approach. Silver culture takes into account the idea
Speaker 1: that you want that area that you cut down to
Speaker 1: grow back to renew so that again you hit that
Speaker 1: um net annual increase rather than decrease, to where the
Speaker 1: amount of trees you have in stock or growing in
Speaker 1: a particular year is actually more than the amount of
Speaker 1: trees you harvest that same year. To do that, you
Speaker 1: have to be selective. You have to be smart in
Speaker 1: the number, amount and type of trees you cut down
Speaker 1: during any given uh tree cut. Yeah, with clear cutting.
Speaker 1: When you hear that, you would just think like why
Speaker 1: would anyone argue that that's a good idea? But people do.
Speaker 1: It's very controversial. Um, if you're in the timber timber industry, yeah,
Speaker 1: forestry industrystry industry, you can say, um, you will think
Speaker 1: in good confidence that you can say that clear cutting
Speaker 1: is fine if you do it the right way. I
Speaker 1: don't get that. Yeah, they said that there are seven
Speaker 1: conditions that if you meet them then it's actually better.
Speaker 1: That sounds like, do you want me to read the
Speaker 1: seven When regenerating tree species that need full sunlight to
Speaker 1: stimulate seeds sprouting and seedling growth. When dealing with spars,
Speaker 1: or expose shallow rooted trees that are in danger being
Speaker 1: damaged by wind. When trying to produce an even age
Speaker 1: stand and a stand I found as a group of
Speaker 1: trees that are the same species, age, and condition that
Speaker 1: you can manage as a unit. That's a stand of trees.
Speaker 1: When regenerating stands of tree species that are dependent on
Speaker 1: wind blown seed root suckers or cones that need fire
Speaker 1: to drop seed. When face with salvaging over mature stands
Speaker 1: or stands killed by insects, disease, or fire when converting
Speaker 1: to another tree, speed seeds by planning or seating, and
Speaker 1: finally to provide habitat for wildlfe species that require edge,
Speaker 1: new ground and high density even age stands. I couldn't
Speaker 1: make sense out of anything. Well, one of it really
Speaker 1: stuck out to me, and it was that for when
Speaker 1: you're cutting down an entire area that's been hit by
Speaker 1: pests or disease, that one makes sense to me, especially
Speaker 1: if you're trying to contain an epidemic. Yeah, sure, clear cut,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Everything else, I mean, there were some
Speaker 1: there's some logic to it. At least it's not just
Speaker 1: total madness. Yeah. Opponents to clear cutting will say it
Speaker 1: increases soil erosion, water degradation, increases silt in streams and rivers.
Speaker 1: Aesthetics is the main reason that most people are opposed
Speaker 1: to it, or that many people are is that it
Speaker 1: just looks like a waste land. Right. Well, the problem
Speaker 1: is also with clear cutting, um it sets the stage
Speaker 1: for invasive species of say like fast growing weeds, to
Speaker 1: overcome seedlings, and it keeps the forest from regenerating. So
Speaker 1: therefore clear cutting. Most people, I guess, except for the
Speaker 1: people who came up with those seven conditions, tend to
Speaker 1: believe that is it's an unsustainable method of harvesting timber, right.
Speaker 1: A more sustainable method is shelter wood cutting. That's the
Speaker 1: type of silver culture. Yeah, and that's when they use
Speaker 1: partial cuttings over time. We're talking over ten or twenty years,
Speaker 1: only two to four harvests where things can naturally regenerate
Speaker 1: during that time frame. That sounds like a good idea.
Speaker 1: It is. Um. There's also seed tree cut seed tree harvesting,
Speaker 1: and then selection harvesting, which is where you basically go
Speaker 1: in and say this tree, that tree, that tree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for that are more marketable. But opponents are proponents of
Speaker 1: clear cutting say that's worse. I don't know why, though
Speaker 1: I can see I can see what they're saying. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: think about it, like you're artificially yeah, and you're you're
Speaker 1: disrupting the balance or the ecology of the forest by saying,
Speaker 1: just these great oaks leave all these other crumby elms.
Speaker 1: But the thing is is you're also affecting the ecology
Speaker 1: by cutting down everything the ecosystem. I would like to
Speaker 1: hear from someone that really knows their stuff that is
Speaker 1: a proponent of clear cutting to explain it better to me,
Speaker 1: yeah than the internet, did please do? All right? Um?
Speaker 1: So when you do what when you do use any
Speaker 1: kind of silver cultural technique and you're not just clear cutting,
Speaker 1: you have to go through the the forest and figure
Speaker 1: out what trees you're gonna take a lot of times,
Speaker 1: and even with clear cutting, they will leave um trees
Speaker 1: that are say six inches in diameter or less in
Speaker 1: size they're too young. It's like how you um leave
Speaker 1: uh fawns when you're deer hunting, the exact same thing.
Speaker 1: I love the name of that process when determining um
Speaker 1: and surveying the land to work it all out, It's
Speaker 1: called cruising. I'm gonna crow cruise the forest, right. Everybody
Speaker 1: you know drives around the forest with the pack of
Speaker 1: cigarettes rolled up in their shirt sleeves. Um. Next comes felling,
Speaker 1: and I got confused with tree felling on the correct way.
Speaker 1: So I put a little post on Facebook, and I
Speaker 1: had a guy named Gabriel Fribley who worked as a
Speaker 1: forest service fire and fuel management dude, and he said,
Speaker 1: I've cut hundreds, if not thousands, of trees. So you
Speaker 1: want to hear what he says, because we would screw
Speaker 1: it up. I guarantee it. Are you about to say
Speaker 1: that you know better than this guy. I don't know
Speaker 1: better than this guy, but this this article was definitely
Speaker 1: wrong from everything I found. Yeah, that's exactly why I asked. Uh,
Speaker 1: he said. Terminology changes depending on where you are and
Speaker 1: who you're talking to. There are a number of different
Speaker 1: ways to do so, but the safest, the most common
Speaker 1: is to cut a wedge out of a tree. Measure
Speaker 1: about a third of the diameter of the measuring about
Speaker 1: a third of the diameter of the tree in the
Speaker 1: direction you want tree to fall. Then you that's where
Speaker 1: I would just stop. Yeah, my brains are shut down.
Speaker 1: Yeah uh then you uh. Cutting this wedge will require
Speaker 1: two cuts, a flat cut and then a sloping cut
Speaker 1: that meets the flat cut and freeze the wedge. The
Speaker 1: combination of these two cuts is commonly called the face cut. Okay,
Speaker 1: So then the that is on the side of the
Speaker 1: tree in the direction it's gonna fall, correct, and it's
Speaker 1: like a triangle, yes, with one one. The bottom cut
Speaker 1: is ninety degrees, the top cut is forty five degrees.
Speaker 1: I think, so, okay, the the wedge acts as a hinge,
Speaker 1: so the tree falls in a safe, controlled manner. Then
Speaker 1: there's the third cut, most commonly called the back cut,
Speaker 1: which is a straight cut in the opposite side of
Speaker 1: the tree, about halfway through the diameter of the tree,
Speaker 1: maybe a little more. And that's about two inches above
Speaker 1: the bottom cut on the other side from what I saw.
Speaker 1: And he said, ideally you want to leave the diameter
Speaker 1: of the tree intact between the back cutting the wedge,
Speaker 1: and that's called holding wood. And I think he said
Speaker 1: holding what is just what it sounds like. It holds
Speaker 1: a tree together to make like it's not coming down
Speaker 1: on your head. Basically, it holds it together until you're ready.
Speaker 1: And he said, if you've done these two correctly, three
Speaker 1: actually you should be able to simply push the tree
Speaker 1: over with your hands or drive a wedge into the
Speaker 1: back to bring the tree down. Well that that's pretty
Speaker 1: awesome to push a huge tree down with your hands
Speaker 1: and Yale timber, So thank you to Gabriel Gabriel Fribley,
Speaker 1: Thanks Gabriel. And for firefighting forest fires, yeah, that's pretty neat.
Speaker 1: Or starting them, oh, come on, no, the forestry service
Speaker 1: does controlled burns. Oh yeah, I thought you meant like,
Speaker 1: because there have been cases where they've found arson and
Speaker 1: it was actually a fireman or is mother firefighter? Do
Speaker 1: you remember that there was a dude who was a
Speaker 1: wildfire firefighter who was not getting enough work. I think
Speaker 1: that's what I was thinking. Was it the mom? The
Speaker 1: mom went and a fire so that her son could
Speaker 1: make some money. Not really, but you know the mom
Speaker 1: that just wants to like take care of business. First
Speaker 1: one that's so chuck. Um. You've gone through, you've cut
Speaker 1: a bunch of trees. The first thing the loggers do
Speaker 1: is they hop all over the trees and go hp pep,
Speaker 1: pep pep, and they cut all the limbs off, right.
Speaker 1: It's called bucking, yep. And then once you've got the
Speaker 1: tree bucked, you cut it into huge logs from top
Speaker 1: to bottom. And then you tie the logs up or
Speaker 1: you chain them to a tractor, and you skid them
Speaker 1: along a skidding trail to um what's called the landing area,
Speaker 1: all right, and they pre plan these skidding trails. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is very important, not just willy nilly, because they
Speaker 1: are trying to protect the forest at the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if you have a bunch of tractors driving out
Speaker 1: with lots and lots of heavy logs, heavy heavy logs
Speaker 1: attached to them, you're going to compact the soil like
Speaker 1: this was a tree ten minutes ago. Now it's a log. Yes,
Speaker 1: huge logs, and so um, if you're gonna compact some
Speaker 1: areas soil, you might as well just compact the same
Speaker 1: area so rather than a bunch of areas of soil,
Speaker 1: so that the rest of the forts can stay healthy.
Speaker 1: And when you get to the landing area, these logs
Speaker 1: are gonna be basically graded and sordid, and some of
Speaker 1: them are either going to be sent straight to the
Speaker 1: pulp mills to be created into paper right or fiber
Speaker 1: board or something like that, and then um, others may
Speaker 1: be sent in the higher grade stuff will probably be
Speaker 1: sent to um sawmills or concentration yards, which are basically
Speaker 1: the second stage of these landing areas, where um, these
Speaker 1: people say we're gonna put all these specific species of
Speaker 1: trees over here because this one sawmill likes only oaks,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna send them their oaks. So either the
Speaker 1: landing area goes directly a sawmill, or there's that extra
Speaker 1: step of the concentration yard in there. Yeah. And if
Speaker 1: this sounds dangerous, um it is. And depending on what
Speaker 1: year you're looking at, logging is either the one or
Speaker 1: two aside from commercial fishing, most dangerous job in the
Speaker 1: United States at least. Either way, you can find documentary
Speaker 1: television shows about these professions on Discovery Channel. That's right,
Speaker 1: check your local list and other channels. M this past year,
Speaker 1: I think it was commercial fishing. Airline pilot was number three.
Speaker 1: I find that very unnerving. Yeah, right, what I thought.
Speaker 1: It's like, I thought planes didn't crash much. What's up
Speaker 1: with that? I don't know, well, and my fear of
Speaker 1: flying just came back. Farmers and ranchers or four in
Speaker 1: case you're wondering, mining machine operator, then roofers, sanitation collectors,
Speaker 1: which I thought was interesting. Are you sure it's that
Speaker 1: like military jet pilot dude, soldier wasn't even listed in
Speaker 1: the top ten an airline pilot, But like I said,
Speaker 1: I think they go by deaths in that previous year.
Speaker 1: I don't care. It probably depends on if we're at
Speaker 1: war or you know. Okay, but airline pilot was still
Speaker 1: in there. It was uh, And then truckers and industrial machinists,
Speaker 1: especially ice robe truckers. Probably yeah, for real, I'm sure
Speaker 1: among truckers that they probably have the higher mortality rate. Well,
Speaker 1: you were shilling for Discovery. I think that was on History. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're shilling more for Discovery now than when they owned it,
Speaker 1: which is weird. Weird. What do you think podcaster? Is? Podcaster?
Speaker 1: Pretty unless apparently you're on a commercial airline, like a
Speaker 1: one in ten million chance of death. Yes, if you're
Speaker 1: a podcaster death, you know, we can figure that out
Speaker 1: if we knew what math was. I don't. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think if, like how we would die from doing this,
Speaker 1: flying somewhere to do a live podcast. Probably right, I
Speaker 1: would say if somebody locked the door and Jerry started
Speaker 1: to fire in here, right, then we could probably die
Speaker 1: from part Actually, in our case, it would be if
Speaker 1: Jerry finally snaps and just murders us both. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think we could defend Jerry all so chuck um.
Speaker 1: Once the stuff hits the sawmill, we'll go there. We
Speaker 1: already kind of hit the pulp mill, which stink. By
Speaker 1: the way, one of the foul smells on Earth are
Speaker 1: those like the can I just say egg fart? No way.
Speaker 1: You worse than that? Oh I thought it was like
Speaker 1: that real sulfury smell. Now that's well water down in Florida. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is like it's its own smell. Alright, you've surely
Speaker 1: smelled it before. You ever been to a chicken farm?
Speaker 1: That's okay, you're right that that might be the worst
Speaker 1: smell of all. Didn't you use to work on chicken
Speaker 1: farms doing software or something not on farms? Okay, but
Speaker 1: but other people in our company would go to the
Speaker 1: farms and like teach them how to use the software.
Speaker 1: It smells so bad, which is imagined that job going
Speaker 1: teaching these people that have been like literally counting chicken
Speaker 1: heads for their entire life, teach them how to use
Speaker 1: the computer to do it. They were not receptive many times.
Speaker 1: Talk about hunting and pecking. Yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: hunting and pecking. So um at the at the sawmill,
Speaker 1: right when you're cutting up, well, when you're when you
Speaker 1: get a bunch of logs, you're like, these are some
Speaker 1: good logs, but I can't do much with this bark.
Speaker 1: It can use mulch that kind of thing, and actually bark.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize this bark represents basically one of two
Speaker 1: organs of the tree. There's actually three. Should we talk
Speaker 1: about the inside of a tree a little bit? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought this was interesting. So the bark is the
Speaker 1: fol um, it's the sugar conducting cells flow the flow
Speaker 1: them and and basically it just provides energy. It transfers
Speaker 1: energy throughout the tree. It's like the internal piping. Part
Speaker 1: of it is the flow them. Yeah. And there's that
Speaker 1: one bugs Bunny song. It makes like you know that
Speaker 1: Bugs Bunny assembly line song, remember the power something. So
Speaker 1: that's the sound that that makes if you listen very
Speaker 1: carefully in the forest. True. Uh. There's another set of
Speaker 1: internal piping uh, the tissue called the xyleum uh. And
Speaker 1: they carry the xylum carries the water up and down
Speaker 1: the tree, right, And they are well suited to do
Speaker 1: so because they are like pipes. They are shaped like piping. Right.
Speaker 1: So the Fulham flow that's bark, the xyleum that's the
Speaker 1: wood inside. And in between the two you have a
Speaker 1: thin layer that's basically stem cells. It's called the cambium,
Speaker 1: and the cambium produces flow um and um xyleum cells
Speaker 1: and it produces a xylem cells inward. Right, So the stuff,
Speaker 1: the part of the tree that's closest to the bark
Speaker 1: is also the youngest heartwood. That's deep Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: sap wood. Further inside, deeper into the tree, that's the
Speaker 1: older xyleum, and that's the heartwood. It's just the oldest
Speaker 1: part of the tree. Yes, and you when the log
Speaker 1: gets to the sawmill, they're going to basically separate those
Speaker 1: two things because there's different uses for sap wood and
Speaker 1: for heartwood. But the first thing they're gonna do is
Speaker 1: get rid of the bark. Yeah. They put it, uh
Speaker 1: in a debarking drum and it's it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a nightclub. It just kind of everything rubs together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they put several different logs in and let the logs
Speaker 1: rub their own bark off of one another. They put
Speaker 1: on a little music. It's pretty horrific. Foam machine. You're
Speaker 1: a tree and uh, all of a sudden you have
Speaker 1: a naked tree, right, you know, strip the skin right
Speaker 1: off of it, and that bark can become a mulch
Speaker 1: and uh what else? Fuel fuel pretty much? Ye, okay,
Speaker 1: decorative mulchen fuel. But the Once you've got that naked log,
Speaker 1: you're all set. So you want to cut the the
Speaker 1: sapwood from the heartwood because the heartwood extraordinarily strong and
Speaker 1: you use it for posts and timbers and beams and
Speaker 1: things like that that you really are going to put
Speaker 1: a lot of weight on sometimes, right sometimes. And actually
Speaker 1: there's another article I read once about this um like, uh,
Speaker 1: this commercial diving company down in like central Florida, that
Speaker 1: their whole job was they would go down in the
Speaker 1: swamp and um like raise old cypress logs from the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century that have just been down there since then.
Speaker 1: And um they sell them as like reclaimed original like
Speaker 1: heart of cypress for flooring people pay mind boggling amounts
Speaker 1: for because this this log was felled, you know, a
Speaker 1: hundreds something years ago and it just sank. It happened
Speaker 1: to be one of the ones that sank, and they
Speaker 1: couldn't do anything with it. Back then, there were so
Speaker 1: many cypress trees that they just didn't even bother with those.
Speaker 1: So now these guys go down and dive and identify
Speaker 1: them and raise them up and then sell them. That
Speaker 1: is heavy. Yeah, uh, And actually that perfect time to
Speaker 1: mention my buddy Jason from Damn castor Guitars. He built
Speaker 1: me a customed telecaster replica and they use uh old
Speaker 1: wood from a damn in Georgia that had been underwater
Speaker 1: for like a hundred years. And this thing is it's
Speaker 1: the heaviest guitar. It's beautiful, but it's tough on my back?
Speaker 1: Is it? Is it worth it? Though? Yeah? Man, it's
Speaker 1: I mean it's gorgeous. And the wood they get is
Speaker 1: really just heavy and dense and gorgeous wood. And they
Speaker 1: got this big load of it from a dam that
Speaker 1: they tore down and think Columbus, Georgia. And so they've
Speaker 1: got all this wood now that they're making these sweet
Speaker 1: guitars out of. Would you name your guitar? I haven't
Speaker 1: named it. I don't really name my guitars, although he
Speaker 1: wanted me to. Yeah, you gotta name your guitar. I
Speaker 1: got four guitars there, one through four. You should name
Speaker 1: one Joni and one Chocci at least alright, and one
Speaker 1: always keep them right next to each other, and one
Speaker 1: Fonzie and one Ralph Mouth. Now who was Fonzie's uh
Speaker 1: leather leather tuscad arrow pink. Well, they're sisters so was
Speaker 1: Pinky the younger sister. I think Leather was the one
Speaker 1: that looked like Joan Jett and Pinky is the one
Speaker 1: that looked like a bombshell model, like had the you know,
Speaker 1: the pink sweaters and the big poofy hair. So he
Speaker 1: which one did he date? I think he dated Pinky Leather.
Speaker 1: She she didn't need guys she was. I think I
Speaker 1: remember who you're talking about. I don't remember Pinky Tuskedero.
Speaker 1: I definitely remember Leather Tuscadero. Man whoever wrote that show
Speaker 1: was a genius. Right, Well, what they're doing is they're
Speaker 1: satisfying everyone. They're like, you like the ladies rough and tumble,
Speaker 1: or you like them dressed up in pink with like
Speaker 1: poofy hair. Right? Do you like him with an Italian name? Right? Uh?
Speaker 1: Where are we have we debarked or in like Milwaukee? Right? Yes,
Speaker 1: we have deepark to answer your question. Okay, so we debarked.
Speaker 1: You got a naked log. If it's gonna be paper,
Speaker 1: it's gonna go to a chipper, which cuts the log
Speaker 1: into little little squares about two inches by a quarter
Speaker 1: of an inch thick, and they're gonna mix those chips
Speaker 1: up with chemicals and stuff. They're going to uh put
Speaker 1: it in a digester. It's a big pressure cooker and
Speaker 1: that is what separates that cellulose from the lignant that
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier. To get your pulp. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just want to get that lignant out of there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's wet, it's fibrous. They bleach it to the
Speaker 1: proper shade, mix it with water again, form it into
Speaker 1: big mats, and then press them under these incredible rollers
Speaker 1: to press out all that water. And then there you go.
Speaker 1: You've got what will be paper. Right. And if you're
Speaker 1: making lumber, you send your um, your log to the
Speaker 1: scooby doo head rig is what it's called. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: those things are awesome. The thing that people are always
Speaker 1: tied on going toward and just cuts the log in half,
Speaker 1: or it cuts the edges off, and maybe like just
Speaker 1: cuts out the heart. It just sort of roughs it
Speaker 1: out right, and then you have um a couple of
Speaker 1: other types of sauce. There's a trimmer that squares the ends.
Speaker 1: Before that, you have an edger which creates the um,
Speaker 1: well the edges for your lumber. And then of course
Speaker 1: there's a whole other process involved in making roundwood a
Speaker 1: k A posts which are not lumber. Evidently, Uh, your
Speaker 1: heartwood is gonna be um older obviously, because you know
Speaker 1: how you can tell a tree by the rings, those
Speaker 1: inner rings that we talked about the xyleum, right, and
Speaker 1: it's the cambium is creating more xylem cells. They're going
Speaker 1: on the outside of the heartwood. Tree is growing outward
Speaker 1: and they're there's just gonna be more knots in that
Speaker 1: heartwood too, which is it branches past it's sturdier. But
Speaker 1: a lot of people would also be like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to see knots, so they're not going to use it.
Speaker 1: For I do want to see knots, depend on what
Speaker 1: you're doing, like a good knot in the right place.
Speaker 1: For instance, my guitar has a beautiful not in the
Speaker 1: center of the back that's just gorgeous. Now that I
Speaker 1: would call this one pinky tuscadero, I think, okay, so
Speaker 1: that's pinkcaera maybe leather to but I actually looked up
Speaker 1: not so I was like, wait, what is it not,
Speaker 1: not even thinking well, of course it's just a former branch. Oh.
Speaker 1: I didn't think about that either. Yeah, it's either a
Speaker 1: branch base or a branch bud that never happened. Huh.
Speaker 1: Do you know not only did I not think that
Speaker 1: that's what it not was, I didn't even think think
Speaker 1: what it not was. Yeah, all right. And the last
Speaker 1: part of that process is you got to dry this
Speaker 1: stuff out. So you stack it up, sorted out, and
Speaker 1: you dry it in the kiln. Correct, Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: it's like you made something out of clay. Should we
Speaker 1: take a break. Let's take a break, man, and then
Speaker 1: we'll take it home. So Chuck, you kind of mentioned
Speaker 1: like early conservation folks that you, um were in awe
Speaker 1: of John your h John Muir was cool, weirdo um.
Speaker 1: And these people they reacted to this rampant um deforestation
Speaker 1: that was going on, like there was a significant amount
Speaker 1: of logging that happened between the seventeenth century and the
Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century, up to thirty of the original forest
Speaker 1: land by the end of the Civil War was gone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about a billion acres that was originally there,
Speaker 1: so thirty percent of that gone, right, And there was
Speaker 1: what was called they they were worried that there was
Speaker 1: going to be a quote national famine of wood and
Speaker 1: it wasn't just conservation at the time, Like plastics had
Speaker 1: not been developed. UM. Cheap easy metal alloys weren't developed
Speaker 1: until say the mid twentieth century, right, so we like
Speaker 1: it was. Yeah, we really used wood a lot and
Speaker 1: for also for fuel, for king, for heating, all that
Speaker 1: stuff we needed would so it was gonna be a
Speaker 1: big deal if we ran out of wood. And as
Speaker 1: a result, a lot of people got behind these conservation efforts, UM,
Speaker 1: and especially the government here in the United States. UM.
Speaker 1: All government levels owned forest land, UM, but for the
Speaker 1: most part, the federal government owns the most. And they
Speaker 1: don't just protect it and say this is off limits.
Speaker 1: They say, uh, you guys can come and pay for
Speaker 1: the right to cut down some trees from here, but
Speaker 1: you're you're going to follow our rules. Yeah, three three
Speaker 1: million acres of federally owned land in this country is
Speaker 1: public forest land. So either like national forest or I
Speaker 1: guess to be used by the logging industry if you
Speaker 1: meet the right conditions against Yeah, but I think even
Speaker 1: national forests fall under the that that umbrellas. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't mean that that they were not the same. What
Speaker 1: what does happen sometimes UM, is say animal will be placed.
Speaker 1: An animal that calls forest land or timberland it's home
Speaker 1: will be placed on the endangered list, and as a
Speaker 1: result of that, the forest industry will just completely shift.
Speaker 1: And that was the case with the Mexican spotted owl
Speaker 1: in the nineties. So the Mexican spotted owl was on
Speaker 1: its way to becoming extinct, and it made its home
Speaker 1: in the West, the western softwood temperate forests right and um.
Speaker 1: The US government decided that this was enough of a
Speaker 1: problem that they put it on the endangered species list
Speaker 1: and protected it. And that meant that its habitat was protected,
Speaker 1: which meant that all of this public land that all
Speaker 1: these logging companies used to go and log on, they
Speaker 1: couldn't log there anymore. Like no, they didn't know. It
Speaker 1: was enormous. Um. And you know that a federal agency
Speaker 1: is doing its job when it's being sued by conservationists
Speaker 1: and logging companies right at the same time over the
Speaker 1: same thing, so or else they're not doing their job
Speaker 1: at all, depending on how you look at it. But
Speaker 1: eventually the Mexican spotted owl um was protected, its habitat
Speaker 1: was protected, and so the forestry, the timber industry shifted eastward,
Speaker 1: and so they they the there was a shift not
Speaker 1: just in direction on the continent, but also in where
Speaker 1: they were taking timber from. So now more timber is
Speaker 1: taken from privately held lands in the east than public
Speaker 1: held lands in the west because of the Mexican Because
Speaker 1: of this one type of owl completely changed the complexion
Speaker 1: of the timber industry in the United States. But the
Speaker 1: timber industry is doing just fine, you know, And it's
Speaker 1: a real it's a real testimony that like they can adapt,
Speaker 1: you know, the Mexican spotted owl can adapt, but the
Speaker 1: timber industry can. Apparently. You ever see owls in Atlanta? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have before. Why they're amazing. I love owls. Gorgeis
Speaker 1: in that wingspan. It's like it's remark coble. When you
Speaker 1: see one fly, Yes, it's like, whoa that looks that's
Speaker 1: bigger than most birds. Have you ever had one like
Speaker 1: perch outside of your window while you're trying to sleep, Well,
Speaker 1: I've got we have one that lives behind our house.
Speaker 1: Does he keep you up? No, We've seen it a
Speaker 1: couple of times and we hear it a lot, which
Speaker 1: I love. It doesn't like wake me up or anything. Oh,
Speaker 1: we had a one that was keeping us awake. Really
Speaker 1: shoot it. No, No, that just went out and shying
Speaker 1: a flashlight in this general direction and it piped down.
Speaker 1: Never heard from it again. So they got the message,
Speaker 1: got you, and we were out less after that. He's
Speaker 1: like that guy with the flashlight. He's bad news getting
Speaker 1: out of here. Um. Alright, So the federal government owns
Speaker 1: a lot of land which is managed managed, managed by
Speaker 1: um some different bodies. Um, but it's you know, they
Speaker 1: try and do their best job with things like the
Speaker 1: Healthy Forest Restoration Act, signed in two thousand three by G. W.
Speaker 1: Bush all right to help protect forest land. So chuck,
Speaker 1: it's about here though that Like this is when I
Speaker 1: was like, I feel like we're really wading into an
Speaker 1: explained territory forest. Yeah, there's a lot of like I
Speaker 1: suspect a lot of greenwashing going on, and um, so
Speaker 1: I started poking around and I've I've found that the
Speaker 1: Sustainable Forestry Initiative is very frequently accused of greenwashing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know how like um like fair trade, Like
Speaker 1: you'll look for a fair trade label and you'll be like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pay a little more for this because I
Speaker 1: believe that the people who made it were paid a
Speaker 1: better wage than you know, this competitor that wasn't fair trade.
Speaker 1: That's what the Sustainable Forestry Initiative seal of approval was
Speaker 1: meant for. That you could look for it on like
Speaker 1: a ream of paper or something and say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this thing was this paper was harvested using say, shelter
Speaker 1: cutting techniques. There's some sort of silvicultural techniques that that
Speaker 1: promotes sustainable forestry. The thing is is um. There's some
Speaker 1: other groups, say, like forest Ethics is a nonprofit kind
Speaker 1: of watchdog group that has come out and really aggressively
Speaker 1: said that the UM, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative is basically
Speaker 1: just a greenwashing front operation that's funded by paper companies.
Speaker 1: But it was international paper, international paper. UM. Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of others that's like think Weyerhauser
Speaker 1: was one maybe um that that fund this this approval
Speaker 1: company or organizations. From what I can tell, it looks
Speaker 1: that way. Um and yeah, it's yeah, it's very disconcerning. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: there are some that do appear to be utterly legitimate,
Speaker 1: and the chief among them is the Forest Stewardship Council.
Speaker 1: They do the same thing. But they're the real deal.
Speaker 1: So this article you sent me that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of major brands dumping the sf I. I saw
Speaker 1: that and I was like, well, that's terrible, but they're
Speaker 1: moving to the better standard. Is that correct? That's the
Speaker 1: impression I have. That makes sense now, Yeah, rather than
Speaker 1: bearing the s f I seal of approval like um
Speaker 1: or buying paper that bears that seal approval, because it's
Speaker 1: not even necessarily the paper companies that are doing this
Speaker 1: because they're the ones funding the s f I. It's
Speaker 1: like Office Depot is no longer buying s f I
Speaker 1: sourced paper. I'm guessing they're probably going with the f
Speaker 1: s C, the Forest Stewardship Council. So Hewlett Packard, a
Speaker 1: T and t um pitney bowls all state, they buy
Speaker 1: a lot of paper, shouting them out right because they're
Speaker 1: doing the right thing. It sounds like, yeah, that makes
Speaker 1: more sense. I was confused. I thought they were dropping
Speaker 1: the SFI, which was a good thing. But yeah, this
Speaker 1: is all clear. Now. Hey, don't thank me. Thank Forest Ethics,
Speaker 1: who apparently routinely gets season then desist letters from uh
Speaker 1: paper companies in the forests or the Sustainable Forestry Initiative
Speaker 1: UM and then chuck. The Force Service itself is often
Speaker 1: criticized for being in bed with UM, the timber industry.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're the Alaska thing I was teasing earlier.
Speaker 1: What is it? There is something called the Big Thorn
Speaker 1: Timber Sale. Six thousand acres acres of seven hundred year
Speaker 1: old forest in the Tongas in southern Alaska up for
Speaker 1: sale for clear cutting, clear cutting. And the problem is
Speaker 1: it is like, yes, it is, that's exactly right. UM.
Speaker 1: The problem is it is not just the people are
Speaker 1: worried that the forest won't recover, but that this forest
Speaker 1: is also used by other industries like fishing industry, UM,
Speaker 1: tourism industry. These people are like, um, we're using this acreage.
Speaker 1: Can't just come come in and cut it down. Here's
Speaker 1: a couple of lawsuits to stop that sale. And I
Speaker 1: guess the federal judge in two thousand fifteen, I think
Speaker 1: March ruled no, go ahead, You're well within your rights.
Speaker 1: Maybe discuss thing, but go ahead and sell acres of
Speaker 1: old growth forest in Alaska for clear cutting with the
Speaker 1: presumption that it will go to a logging company. Yes,
Speaker 1: you'd be great. Is if like, oh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Warren Buffett bought it. He said, I'm gonna build a
Speaker 1: small house in the middle of it. And that's a
Speaker 1: that gets should wear a cape. So, um, deforestation is
Speaker 1: a thing, and I agree with you. We should definitely
Speaker 1: do an episode just on that, right. But that's not
Speaker 1: the only threat to um the forests of the world. Now.
Speaker 1: It is a serious threat, but made threats are not
Speaker 1: the only threat. No, there's a few more natural threats. UM.
Speaker 1: Insects of course. Uh. Specifically invasive species like the Eurasian
Speaker 1: gypsy moth came here in the nineteenth century, and when
Speaker 1: it's a caterpillar, it eats the leaves of hardwood trees
Speaker 1: like a lot of them. Um. To the tune of
Speaker 1: it's nineteen thirty defoliated more than eighty million acres, so
Speaker 1: many East Coast forest eighty million acres just on the
Speaker 1: East coast, this little caterpillar. So that's an insect disease
Speaker 1: is a problem. UM. I know here in Georgia we've
Speaker 1: sudden oak death is a big problem. Uh. And since
Speaker 1: it was originated in nineteen where I guess found in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five, say, a full forty years after that.
Speaker 1: I remember when this happened, it was probably Clinton's fault.
Speaker 1: It was Clinton's fault. Um. Since then, it has killed
Speaker 1: more than one million oak trees. Yeah, that's no gypsy moth,
Speaker 1: but that's a lot now. Um. And then lastly, invasive
Speaker 1: species are a real problem. Cutzo that was the other
Speaker 1: one I want to do. Yeah, oh you want to
Speaker 1: do one on Cutzy ye so um. Cutzy was a
Speaker 1: great example of an invasive species. It's a non native,
Speaker 1: fast growing vine that and I think it's native. Japan
Speaker 1: has plenty of natural predators that like to eat it right. Um.
Speaker 1: Here in the United States, in the southeastern United States
Speaker 1: where it was given as a gift by Japanese businessmen
Speaker 1: in the thirties. Um, it doesn't have any natural predators
Speaker 1: and it just grows like crazy. And the problem is
Speaker 1: that it grows up and over trees and creates its
Speaker 1: own It uses the tree structure and then creates its
Speaker 1: own canopy around it. It basically creates a Dicen sphere
Speaker 1: around a tree to to but it's it's a reverse
Speaker 1: Dicens sphere. It's accepting the sun from the outside rather
Speaker 1: than harvesting it from the inside. Tree death is what
Speaker 1: it means. I know that you hate seeing that, like
Speaker 1: I just like shake my fist that it cuts you, Like,
Speaker 1: get off of that tree, just just stay on the ground.
Speaker 1: But do you ever take time to go out there
Speaker 1: and with your scissor shosht off that tree very frequently?
Speaker 1: Um mile a minute weed is another good example. Apparently
Speaker 1: another Asian import that has choked the Mid Atlantic region.
Speaker 1: I guess the lesson here is this uh. An Asian
Speaker 1: business person ever gives you uh non native plant as
Speaker 1: a gift, Smile, politely say thank you very much. Also
Speaker 1: don't make eye contact right and say thank you very much.
Speaker 1: But I cannot accept this gift. But would you like
Speaker 1: to go have a lovely sushi meal? Anything else? I
Speaker 1: got nothing else? So that is timber. If you want
Speaker 1: go type that word into the search part how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. And since I said search parts, time
Speaker 1: for listener mail. I'm gonna call this coolest tattoo I've
Speaker 1: scene in a while. Hey, guys, listen to Satanic Panic
Speaker 1: today and I loved it. I loved that episode, by
Speaker 1: the way. Yeah, we've gotten some good feedback. Jerry's even
Speaker 1: nodding and she hates most of what we do. She's
Speaker 1: not even aware of most of what we did. Uh.
Speaker 1: She was born in n two this writer, and she says,
Speaker 1: I remember family members talking about parts of our home
Speaker 1: state of Kentucky that we're lousy with Satan worshippers. One
Speaker 1: of the things I like best in the episode was
Speaker 1: when we talked about the influence works of fiction had
Speaker 1: on superstition. Made me think of how I've encountered this
Speaker 1: in my own life. I have a great love of
Speaker 1: wigia boards. And in fact, I don't think she's heard
Speaker 1: the episode on wigia boards that she didn't reference it. Oh,
Speaker 1: that was a good episode, So Carrie, we did an
Speaker 1: episode on that. You should listen to it. I think
Speaker 1: they are pretty and have I have great memories of
Speaker 1: playing with one as a kid. I have quite a
Speaker 1: few at home, um including I have quite a few
Speaker 1: Wigia board items, including a tattoo on my chest. And
Speaker 1: she attached to photo. She's got like the upper lettering
Speaker 1: of the wigia board, like right across, like under her neckline,
Speaker 1: at the top of her chest. Yeah, it's and like
Speaker 1: when she wears like a dress with that exposed, it's
Speaker 1: just lovely looking like that pont and everything. I saw
Speaker 1: the photo and I thought it was really cool looking.
Speaker 1: But of course she's people are gonna say, like, what's
Speaker 1: up with this girl? This has led to some very
Speaker 1: interesting conversations, of course with people. A lot of people
Speaker 1: really like it, like me, but some have been a
Speaker 1: little freaked out by it. Thanks to movies like an
Speaker 1: Exorcist and more recently wegia uh, the wigia board has
Speaker 1: been given a lot more power, and I feel that
Speaker 1: it really deserves I had my tattoo for over a
Speaker 1: year and have not noticed any paranormal activity surrounding me,
Speaker 1: and I have not been possessed, and I have not
Speaker 1: had a demon used my chest as a doorway to
Speaker 1: our world. So I think I will be Okay, we'll see.
Speaker 1: Keep up the great work that is from carry uh
Speaker 1: parentheses like the movie, a lot of horror movie references
Speaker 1: in that. Yeah, I thought it was very cool tattoo.
Speaker 1: Nice man um well carry right, that's right, Okay, Thanks
Speaker 1: a lot, Carrie for writing in and Uh. If you
Speaker 1: want to write to us, you can join us on
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know. You can
Speaker 1: tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You
Speaker 1: can send us an email to stuff podcast the House
Speaker 1: Stuff where dot com and has always joined us at
Speaker 1: our home on the web, Stuff you should know dot
Speaker 1: com for moralness and thousands of other topics. Visit how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com m