Speaker 1: Hi, folks.
Speaker 2: Chuck here on a Saturday morning for me, maybe Saturday afternoon.
Speaker 2: Maybe he's not Saturday at all in your world. Who knows.
Speaker 2: But we release these curated selects on Saturday. And here's
Speaker 2: my pick for this week from January twenty first, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: Timber How Timber Works. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 2: a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there, post nasal drip
Speaker 1: some sort, and that makes this stuff you should know.
Speaker 2: It makes this room the infection zone.
Speaker 1: Oh, Jerry, are you sick?
Speaker 2: No, she's not sick. Are you no?
Speaker 1: Good, she's just snotty. That's fine as long as she's
Speaker 1: not sick. Are you sick? No?
Speaker 2: Man?
Speaker 1: How are you feeling? Great? Good? Good?
Speaker 2: Tired?
Speaker 1: Are you well?
Speaker 2: You're a dad?
Speaker 1: All dads are tired, aren't they? No, it has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with it. Oh yeah, no, why are you tired?
Speaker 2: Just uh, didn't get enough sleep last night?
Speaker 1: Okay, but not because dad stuff. Okay, we'll leave it
Speaker 1: at that.
Speaker 2: That's set for building a wall.
Speaker 1: Let's back away from that question, shall we instead, chuck,
Speaker 1: take my hand, and let's wander off into the forest.
Speaker 2: Uh, this was pretty neat. I gotta say. I was
Speaker 2: excited about this because A it's a dense.
Speaker 1: Like a forest.
Speaker 2: B it's cool like a forest, and C it provides
Speaker 2: a great canopy over our heads.
Speaker 1: It does a canopy of knowledge. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I reverse engineered that last one.
Speaker 1: Oh you did?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Man, he is on a roll.
Speaker 2: We're gonna get a few. We're gonna get some stuff
Speaker 2: wrong on this one.
Speaker 1: I don't know that's correct.
Speaker 2: I feel like any can we tackle something that's in
Speaker 2: any industry like this, The people in the industry are
Speaker 2: going to have way better current information than we will.
Speaker 1: So I think it's funny because I picked up on
Speaker 1: the same thing, not just with the industry, but also
Speaker 1: with the battle over Yeah, forestry rights.
Speaker 2: This is a minefield, my friend.
Speaker 1: It really is, because this article was written a number
Speaker 1: of years back and is very friendly to the forestry industry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not like extraordinarily conservation minded as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't think I had to drop a bombshell.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think I had a slant. I saw
Speaker 2: it as pretty neutral.
Speaker 1: I don't know man like.
Speaker 2: But here's how confused I was. And we'll get to
Speaker 2: this later. But these initiatives and certification programs, so we'll
Speaker 2: get to later. I didn't know like which one I
Speaker 2: should like and not like. At the end, I can
Speaker 2: tell you, well, save it, okay, all right, because I
Speaker 2: need somebody to tell me what the like and not like, I.
Speaker 1: Can tell you just save it, all right, I'm saving it.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about forests in general, Chuck.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, let's talk about our country a little.
Speaker 1: Bit, in the United States.
Speaker 2: Well, even more, let's talk about our continent.
Speaker 1: Okay, North America.
Speaker 2: That's right. When settlers came over here, there was a
Speaker 2: 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 were so many what was it passenger pigeons
Speaker 1: that died off that were just driven to extinction because
Speaker 1: of humans. I'm pretty sure his passenger.
Speaker 2: Remember I got confused in the episode about which.
Speaker 1: It was a very confusing thing. And they think that
Speaker 1: ultimately the pigeons had been managed by Native Americans who
Speaker 1: were wiped out by disease, so that when the first
Speaker 1: Europeans really came along, they saw tons of pigeons places
Speaker 1: over Rham with pigeons because there was no one there
Speaker 1: to hunt anymore. Right, Yeah, same thing with the forest.
Speaker 1: They think there was so much forest cover that it
Speaker 1: was because the Native Americans who had managed the forest
Speaker 1: before had all died off or largely died off, and
Speaker 1: then what we thought was just this crazy stretch of
Speaker 1: forest that had always been there was actually fairly new.
Speaker 1: But it's probably not the case.
Speaker 2: Well at any rate. Way back in the sixteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: about forty percent of land north of Mexico was trees.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not too bad. No, that's a lot of trees.
Speaker 2: And trees are great because they give us wood. I
Speaker 2: mean they led to you know, pre metal, it was
Speaker 2: all about wood, Yeah, you know, ships, buildings, houses, wagons.
Speaker 1: William Harris wh wrote this article. Yeah, he makes the
Speaker 1: very smart point that we came and cut down trees
Speaker 1: and basically built a new nation. Yeah, certainly a new economy,
Speaker 1: subtle new nations out of wood, definitely, for sure, like
Speaker 1: literally out of wood.
Speaker 2: If you're talking the world and Planet Earth, about thirty
Speaker 2: percent is forest land, and Russian and Brazil lead the
Speaker 2: way because they have huge tracts of land.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but as a continent, actually Europe is the most.
Speaker 1: They have the most forest of any kind of the
Speaker 1: most dense. I believe that they have one thousand and
Speaker 1: one million, which is a little over a billion hectares
Speaker 1: hectares point four acres, right, sure, the total number of
Speaker 1: acreage if you're in the US of forest land throughout
Speaker 1: the world one point five eight billion acres of forests.
Speaker 2: Is that the most broad definition of a forest that
Speaker 2: includes everything.
Speaker 1: And that's in the US. No, no, no, that's the
Speaker 1: world one point five eight billions in the.
Speaker 2: World, gotcha. Yeah, Because in the US, if you talk
Speaker 2: to a forester, they will say, everyone thinks that you
Speaker 2: see a bunch of trees and that's a forest. But
Speaker 2: they would narrow down that definition to at least one
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: Well, if you're talking that definition, then the US has
Speaker 2: about seven hundred and fifty million acres seven sixty six
Speaker 2: In Canada, yep, and that's that's forest.
Speaker 1: My friend. Boom, we're done. Yeah, it was a minefield,
Speaker 1: but we navigated.
Speaker 2: But this is about timber and that's different than forest.
Speaker 1: It is different than forrest. So a forest is that
Speaker 1: definition that you just said. It's an acre of land
Speaker 1: with ten percent tree cover?
Speaker 2: Right, yep.
Speaker 1: Timberland is a type of forest land, but it has
Speaker 1: to have a certain amount of usable trees on it
Speaker 1: or timber, yeah, to make it timberland. Rightes.
Speaker 2: I grew up in a forest actually, now that I
Speaker 2: think about it, Oh yeah, by that definition.
Speaker 1: Nice. What was it called.
Speaker 2: It's called Chuckshause Chuck's House forest. Yeah, I mean it was.
Speaker 2: I think we had We had like an acre and
Speaker 2: a half and most of it was.
Speaker 1: Trees, so more than ten percent. Oh yeah, easy. So
Speaker 1: you had a dense forest. It was pretty dense. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: Did you learn to climb trees out there?
Speaker 2: No? But I used to get poked fun at because
Speaker 2: it didn't grow up in a neighborhood like most kids.
Speaker 2: It was just a street with like six houses in
Speaker 2: the forest.
Speaker 1: Who would make fun of you for that?
Speaker 2: What were they saying, Well, you know, it's cool to
Speaker 2: grow up in a neighborhood when in the eighties.
Speaker 1: Hey man, I grew up in a neighborhood in the eighties.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that great.
Speaker 2: I was jealous, man, because everyone else would sneak out
Speaker 2: at night then go to their friend's house and there
Speaker 2: were swimming pools and tennis courts and in the centers,
Speaker 2: and it was just like me and my brother in woods.
Speaker 2: But I guess I got older and everyone was like, dude,
Speaker 2: your house is awesome. You live out in the middle
Speaker 2: of the woods.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, plus you were lucky to have your brother
Speaker 1: to hang out with. He's a great guy. True. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good point. So you know I had a door that
Speaker 1: led out to the back porch. Yeah, I was growing up.
Speaker 1: It's like, there's no sneaking out. It just opened the
Speaker 1: door and went out for my room. There.
Speaker 2: You're just like, go ahead, coming, go as you please.
Speaker 1: No, I wasn't supposed to. But it wasn't a lot
Speaker 1: of sneaking involved. It was opening the door and quietly
Speaker 1: closing it.
Speaker 2: You didn't have to always wanted to shimmy up a
Speaker 2: drain pipe to my room.
Speaker 1: Have you shimmying up or down downs a lot easier.
Speaker 2: Than I could have shimmeyed when I was ten or twelve, though,
Speaker 2: ain't no shimmy in anymore.
Speaker 1: So people have sent in that guide Posts cover. Is
Speaker 1: that you No, okay, it's just some other playing the trumpet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I never played the trumpet. I never was blue
Speaker 2: block or sunglasses.
Speaker 1: It doesn't look like you, but I was like.
Speaker 2: No, and it may not have been a four piece picture,
Speaker 2: but I think it was.
Speaker 1: Someone will find it, I hope. So okay, so let's
Speaker 1: get back to timberland. Yes, timberland is a forest that's
Speaker 1: capable of growing something like twenty cubic feet of commercial
Speaker 1: wood per acre per year. That's right, that's it.
Speaker 2: And people estimate two thirds of our nation is forest
Speaker 2: land and five hundred and two million acres of that
Speaker 2: is timberland.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not bad, not bad at all. No. So
Speaker 1: the key here though is, and this is where the
Speaker 1: big debate comes up. We're not going to get into
Speaker 1: it necessarily now, but the key is that, yes, you
Speaker 1: can have a forest that is capable of growing twenty
Speaker 1: cubic feet of commercial grade lumber timber a year, 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 a net annual gain. That's wrong.
Speaker 1: It's a net annual increase, which means that the amount
Speaker 1: of stuff you're growing in a given year is more
Speaker 1: than what you're harvesting. Difference between a gain and an increase.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying the industry term.
Speaker 2: Oh gotcha.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I looked up net industry gain or yeah, net
Speaker 1: annual gain.
Speaker 2: And they said you must be a city folk.
Speaker 1: Right, idiots, its increase. So the you just basically it's
Speaker 1: pretty simple. You just want to take less trees than
Speaker 1: you're growing in a particular year, or that you have
Speaker 1: than you have in reserve.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And actually the United States has been in an annual
Speaker 1: gain for decades now. Yeah, it's a real concern. It's
Speaker 1: a cause for worry that we over over harvest trees.
Speaker 1: Well we used to man that we DeForest, but if
Speaker 1: you look at the historical data, yeah, we are growing
Speaker 1: more trees than we're taking every year. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think the stat was since the nineteen since nineteen twenty,
Speaker 2: we haven't made anything worse, right, and apparently and since
Speaker 2: the fifties we've gotten way better.
Speaker 1: I think though four times seventies were like kind of bad,
Speaker 1: but I think that was like the transition decade.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, what This made me really appreciate we're early conservationists.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because post Civil War and during pre Civil War
Speaker 2: even people just sort of took what they wanted and
Speaker 2: did what they wanted with the land. There wasn't a
Speaker 2: lot of foresight, and so early conservationists were really fighting
Speaker 2: an uphill battle back then.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: So I just have a lot of respect for them.
Speaker 2: I to say, you know what, I don't know if
Speaker 2: this is smart, what's gonna happen in one hundred years.
Speaker 2: It's like, I know, you need your log cabin, Jebediah.
Speaker 1: What's mind boggling to me is that the debate still
Speaker 1: goes on. Yeah, that's true, you know, but not even
Speaker 1: just with timber, with like climate in general, climate change
Speaker 1: things like that.
Speaker 2: Agreed. All right, So if you're a scientist, you're gonna
Speaker 2: classify forests usually by what kind of trees are there.
Speaker 2: For instance, a tropical rainforest you're gonna have broad leaf evergreens,
Speaker 2: a boreal forest you're gonna have a needle leaf evergreens.
Speaker 1: Then there's a temperate forest, which is like what we
Speaker 1: have here in the southeast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the US are five major regions, Pacific Coast
Speaker 2: Rocky Mountain North South, and I love it. Alaska has
Speaker 2: its own region, yes, just because it's it deserves.
Speaker 1: It, and there's a lot of trees up there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in fact, there's been a little little bit of
Speaker 1: a scandal recently as far as Alaska and trees go.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, big Is that a tease? It's a teas.
Speaker 2: But we're gonna consider a couple of regions here, and
Speaker 2: we're gonna mainly be talking about the United States because
Speaker 2: that's where we live.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there are trees everywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you can apply this to a lot of places.
Speaker 2: But east of the Old Mississippi is the hardwood region
Speaker 2: and west is softwood. And if you're talking hardwood, gums, maples, oaks, walnut,
Speaker 2: very hardwood walnut.
Speaker 1: Mahogany is mahogany in there? Actually, now I think about
Speaker 1: it, I think mahogany is a tropical rainforest tree.
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: I'm an idiot, all right, No, you're not. That's what
Speaker 1: I get for coming up with something on my own.
Speaker 2: Soft woods. You're talking pine, spruce, hemlock, douglas fir, redwoods.
Speaker 2: Those are soft woods. Sure, And we're just getting started.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of information coming your way.
Speaker 1: Should we take a break here?
Speaker 2: Should we?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It sounded like you were working up
Speaker 1: toward that.
Speaker 2: That was a break he set up, wasn't it. All right,
Speaker 2: let's take a break. We'll come back and we'll talk
Speaker 2: about why wood is good. All right. Wood is good
Speaker 2: because you can use it for lots of stuff, which
Speaker 2: we'll talk about.
Speaker 1: And I didn't realize this that we've been using it
Speaker 1: for a very long time, at least one and a
Speaker 1: half million years.
Speaker 2: Right, starting with fire and like clubs and yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you realize that we'd harnessed fire that many years ago?
Speaker 2: I don't know if I ever really thought about it.
Speaker 1: It has a long time for people to be building
Speaker 1: fires a million and a half years ago. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: completely reshaped my ideas of hominids from one point five
Speaker 1: million years ago.
Speaker 2: What did you think about them before?
Speaker 1: Not that they could create fire.
Speaker 2: They're a bunch of cold dopes.
Speaker 1: A little bit maybe that they just kind of may
Speaker 1: do with what came their way rather than actually making fire.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we should do a podcast on the origins of fire.
Speaker 2: We did do one on fire, Yeah, but I don't
Speaker 2: think we covered like the first fires did.
Speaker 1: We or did we? Probably not? Yeah, I think I've
Speaker 1: since seen Quest for Fire, which we've talked about. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: good movie.
Speaker 2: I kind of want to talk about my favorite part,
Speaker 2: but this is a family podcast, so I won't.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's pretty brutal in a lot of ways, isn't it. Yeah?
Speaker 2: All right, So why is wood good? Like I said,
Speaker 2: you can make stuff out of it. Another big thing
Speaker 2: is carbon sequestration, which is why you hear a lot
Speaker 2: of people battling clearcutting for us because carbon sequestrations great.
Speaker 2: It traps carbon, so the build up of CO two
Speaker 2: is reduced.
Speaker 1: Yeah. As a matter of fact, trees account for seventy
Speaker 1: percent of the organic carbon locked in the earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why that canopy is important.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: They also provide habitats for all our animals and birds
Speaker 2: and insects and all the plants and good things that
Speaker 2: we love, and the hydrologic cycle. So a forest will
Speaker 2: help soak up rainfall and filter the water as it
Speaker 2: becomes groundwater, all very important stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you like drinking water, you can thank trees
Speaker 1: for helping keep the soil in tip top shape to
Speaker 1: filter out all that nasty stuff. Yeah. So yes, forests
Speaker 1: are extraordinarily important, right, what is good? But you also
Speaker 1: can make pretty good use of it too, Like if
Speaker 1: you're a clever primate like we humans are, you cannot
Speaker 1: only use it for fire, which a lot of people
Speaker 1: still do around the world. Firewood is still a huge
Speaker 1: use of wood of timber around the world.
Speaker 2: Nothing beats a natural wood fire in a fireplace in
Speaker 2: your home.
Speaker 1: No, it's true, you know. But do you remember when
Speaker 1: we were when we shot those Toyota, those Toyota videos
Speaker 1: that Carnegie mellon. Oh yeah, And one of the innovation
Speaker 1: things was like a filter, like an easy, cheap, portable
Speaker 1: filter for cooking fires. Yeah, indoor cooking fires. I remember
Speaker 1: that because that was a big problem people were like
Speaker 1: making using wood fires to cook with, but they were
Speaker 1: doing it indoors and like suffering all sorts of lung problems.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that still happens in you know, non industrialized nations. Yes,
Speaker 2: 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, right, non
Speaker 1: industrialized I think that's even better.
Speaker 2: All right. So here in the USO and in a
Speaker 2: lot of countries, these days, only seven percent of timber
Speaker 2: is used for I guess heating and cooking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a big push against even that seven percent too. Really,
Speaker 1: it's just such a I agree with you. I love
Speaker 1: that Firefire's nice, but it's wasteful. Yes, okay, Well I
Speaker 1: don't have a working fireplace, so.
Speaker 2: I just like them.
Speaker 1: You just like the idea of it.
Speaker 2: Well, I want one, but I have one of those old,
Speaker 2: you know houses from the nineteen thirties that it's expensive
Speaker 2: to get it retrofitted.
Speaker 1: Have you ever gotten an estimate on it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I need chimney work. I need a bigger firebox.
Speaker 2: They said something like eight or ten grand. The guy
Speaker 2: like tried to talk me out of it. Yeah, the dude,
Speaker 2: I was like, you don't want to make money. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like I want a fire and you're like, oh no,
Speaker 2: it's pretty expensive. I would like, all right, it's wasteful.
Speaker 2: Uh So seven percent goes toward that lumber, which we'll
Speaker 2: get to in a minute, is about fifty three percent
Speaker 2: in the US September.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and most of that goes to new house construction.
Speaker 2: It turns out, oh really that makes sense. Pulp and
Speaker 2: paper are thirty two percent and then composits like plywood
Speaker 2: and veneer the other seven. Right, although I think we're
Speaker 2: missing one percentage point, aren't we?
Speaker 1: Or are we? Mmmm?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder what that is. It's the mystery percent,
Speaker 1: the mystery percent. God knows what they're doing to that
Speaker 1: one percent of wood.
Speaker 2: All right, So I said the word lumber, and lumber
Speaker 2: isn't just cut wood.
Speaker 1: No, just like timberland isn't just forest. Yeah, no, forest
Speaker 1: isn't just timberland. Right.
Speaker 2: Lumber is actually a specific thing. It is wood that
Speaker 2: is squared or rectangular. So when you go to the
Speaker 2: hardware store and you see all the two by fours
Speaker 2: and two by six's and all that stuff, that is
Speaker 2: lumber because it's a square.
Speaker 1: If you point to a post, a round post and
Speaker 1: go give me three of the lumbers.
Speaker 2: We'll say, boy, where'd you come from?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're wrong in a couple of points here, So
Speaker 1: that's called roundwood. Actually, yeah, that doesn't that's not included
Speaker 1: in lumber.
Speaker 2: That's a little nitpicky. If you're outside the industry, I think.
Speaker 1: Say, I agree with you.
Speaker 2: But if someone points that out and then I don't know,
Speaker 2: punch them in the face with the two by four.
Speaker 1: Right, that's not that's not lumber. That's around what Remember
Speaker 1: hacksaw Jim Duggan. Didn't he attack people with the two
Speaker 1: by four and the WWF.
Speaker 2: I didn't watch a ton of wrestling.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure he had like a two by four.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. It's violent.
Speaker 2: Construction. It's about a fifty to fifty split with lumber
Speaker 2: in the US, about half goes to construction and about
Speaker 2: half goes to palettes, crates and furniture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what, I didn't know it would be
Speaker 1: that high. I read an extraordinarily interesting article on the
Speaker 1: pallette trade. Oh, I'm sure it's there's like a whole
Speaker 1: cartel controlling pallettes that people rebel against, and there's like
Speaker 1: pallette thieves and counterfeitters and yeah, it like just it's
Speaker 1: a really interesting art. I'll see if I can find it.
Speaker 1: I'll post it in the podcast page for this.
Speaker 2: Well, pallettes, you can. You can make a lot of
Speaker 2: cool things out of pallettes. And a lot of people
Speaker 2: are finding out their uses, so they think you can
Speaker 2: just go behind the grocery store and take them.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 2: So now a lot of places have big signs that
Speaker 2: are like do not take these palettes.
Speaker 1: No, especially if they're blue, Like, that's stealing. If they're
Speaker 1: blue palettes, yeah, you can get the place where you
Speaker 1: stole them from sued.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the saying. If the palette is blue, it's
Speaker 2: not for.
Speaker 1: You because you'll get sued. That's right.
Speaker 2: Furniture, If you make furniture, you're gonna like hardwood like
Speaker 2: oak and maple, because it's durable and it has that
Speaker 2: lovely grain in mahogany that we all love so much.
Speaker 1: Right, but softwood is no slouch either.
Speaker 2: No, But palettes are used in hardwood too because it's sturdy, right,
Speaker 2: But yeah, softwood's a different deal.
Speaker 1: No. And they usually use softwood for construction lumber too, yea,
Speaker 1: because it contains fewer knots and things like that. And
Speaker 1: actually softwood is used chuck more for construction lumber because
Speaker 1: you can make it long and straight, which is that's
Speaker 1: how you want your construction lumber, long and straight. Nobody
Speaker 1: wants like kind of a topsy turvy house. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: a crazy person, but most people don't. They want straight
Speaker 1: plumb houses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, although it's tough if you've ever done a home
Speaker 2: reno project to find straight lumber these days, is that right? Yeah,
Speaker 2: you go in there and they all seem like they're
Speaker 2: warped and bent. And if you're yeah, and if you're
Speaker 2: a amateur like me, it doesn't help you out any
Speaker 2: if your lumber's not straight. No, you want straight lumbers, Like,
Speaker 2: I don't know how to make up for that. Like
Speaker 2: my buddy Isaac in Kansas help me do my house, right.
Speaker 2: He would go pick out stuff and I would say
Speaker 2: this is curved. He'd be like, I can account for that, huh,
Speaker 2: But I can't.
Speaker 1: He's got like a special organ in his brain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's called smarts, construction carpentry smarts.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's lumber, right. Yeah. You can also make
Speaker 1: paper out of wood. Yeah, this might be the fact
Speaker 1: of the podcast. Are you ready for this? Yeah, paper
Speaker 1: is made out of wood.
Speaker 2: Oh? I thought you had something else? No, you got me.
Speaker 1: Have we done one on paper before? Because this seemed
Speaker 1: awfully familiar?
Speaker 2: No, But I will say this touched off like five
Speaker 2: different topics that we should cover.
Speaker 1: Okay, paper being one of them, all right, the originifier paper?
Speaker 2: Yeah, what else? Deforestation okay, in earnest, Yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 2: touch on it. But and then there's a couple more,
Speaker 2: I think. Okay, pornography just kidding. So let's talk about
Speaker 2: the cellular structure of wood because it's very important.
Speaker 1: Well, especially when you're talking about paper. Yeah, like that
Speaker 1: was not just a non sequitter, it actually makes sense exactly.
Speaker 1: So trees, yeah, like everything else, are made of cells, correct,
Speaker 1: That's right. And when you take enough of these cells
Speaker 1: and stack them together, you can create something as strong
Speaker 1: and tall and rigid as a tree. Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: takes a certain kind of cell to make a tree.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, the cells. If you think of the walls
Speaker 2: of the cell, they make the tree strong. And there
Speaker 2: are a couple of chemicals that make up these walls,
Speaker 2: cellulose and lignan. And cellulose is flexible and bindy, and
Speaker 2: lignan says no, no, I'm your glue. Cellulose. I'm going
Speaker 2: to keep you more rigid because I don't want you
Speaker 2: to bend. So they work together, yeah, to make Whether
Speaker 2: cellulos likes it or not, Yeah, I always wondered about that.
Speaker 1: It has to go along with it.
Speaker 2: It's like I wanted to bend. Ligdan get out of
Speaker 2: my face, right.
Speaker 1: Ligan is like no, no coloring outside the lines.
Speaker 2: So if you separate those things, which we've been doing
Speaker 2: for a long time now, you can get those cellulos
Speaker 2: fibers and actually make something called pulp which will eventually
Speaker 2: make paper.
Speaker 1: Right, and you can form it into a mat press
Speaker 1: and dry it and bleach it and turn it into paper.
Speaker 1: Like you said, you can also make other stuff too,
Speaker 1: technically fiber board, you know, the stuff that they use
Speaker 1: to put on the backs of dressers and things these days. Crud, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's actually made from paper pulp.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Da.
Speaker 2: If you're at another hardware store and some guy that
Speaker 2: works there, lady says, what you want to use is MDF.
Speaker 2: What's the medium density fiberboard? Okay, And that way they
Speaker 2: won't think you're city folk. All you can say, yeah, MDF,
Speaker 2: sure totally, and then they'll know your city folk.
Speaker 1: I'll be like, give me three of those mds. Uh.
Speaker 2: And then you have hardboard, and that's even stronger than fiberboard.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And it's just I think it's harder because it's pressed
Speaker 2: together with so much pressure. It's more dense.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Fiberboard is pulp and glue pressed the pressed together
Speaker 1: hardboard is the same thing, but pressed together, like you said,
Speaker 1: under pressure and then completely different. Actually, although it does
Speaker 1: seem like it would bear a pretty striking resemblance. Is
Speaker 1: particle board.
Speaker 2: Right, Yes, these are composites. Plywood and particle board are
Speaker 2: both composites, right, but they are different. The difference between
Speaker 2: MDF and particle board is MDF is well, particle board
Speaker 2: is cheaper and it's made out of sawdust, whereas the
Speaker 2: MDF is made of an actual fiber.
Speaker 1: Right out of pulp. Yeah, does that make sense? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like Chuck, you realize that stuff you should know has
Speaker 1: hit such a stride, but we're talking about particle board.
Speaker 1: It just hit me.
Speaker 2: Plywood is when you take If you look at plywood
Speaker 2: and on the side of it, you'll see that it's
Speaker 2: a lot of little veneers pressed together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what they're called. Yeah, veneers veneers. Plywood's great,
Speaker 1: but if you really want something that's just as tough,
Speaker 1: just as durable, but cheaper, you're going to go for
Speaker 1: the oriented strand board OSB baby, which is basically like
Speaker 1: plywood made out of particle board.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's all but replaced plywood in construction these days,
Speaker 2: home construction because it's cheaper, it is stronger and more durable,
Speaker 2: and I was wondering why it was stronger, and it's
Speaker 2: because it comes from it's right there in the name.
Speaker 2: It's oriented. The specific orientation of the wood strands makes
Speaker 2: it stronger.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so.
Speaker 2: It's not just haphazardly tossed together and pressed. I guess
Speaker 2: by God, specifically oriented invented nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: And man, yeah, in California, I think. Actually nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so your OSB, if you go into your hardware
Speaker 2: store and they'll say you either want MDF or OSB, say,
Speaker 2: I know what I'm talking about, So don't try and
Speaker 2: don't try and trick me.
Speaker 1: Right, I didn't just fall off of the turnip.
Speaker 2: Truck of the lumber truck. All right, where are we now?
Speaker 2: Are we harvesting it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So to get to this point, to get to all
Speaker 1: this wonderful products of lumber, timber. Sorry, man, I have
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble not confusing lumber with tim That's right.
Speaker 1: Lumber is timber. Timber is not necessarily lumber, right, That's
Speaker 1: what I was taught as a young boy. So when
Speaker 1: you harvest timber, there's a couple of approaches, right, and well,
Speaker 1: there's several approaches but they really fall under two umbrellas.
Speaker 1: One is that take everything to hell with ecology approach
Speaker 1: called clearcutting. Yes, that is all these trees can make
Speaker 1: some money. Ergo, I'm going to cut down all these trees.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Typically over five acres is a clear cut. Yes,
Speaker 2: anything under that it is called a patch cut. Okay,
Speaker 2: although people disagree on that definition too.
Speaker 1: But the suggestion is that under five acres an area
Speaker 1: that small could recover being effectively clear cut.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure it has to do with recovery.
Speaker 1: Oh, it has to do with the amount of money made.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, with clear cutting, you just go in
Speaker 1: and you cut down everything. It's it's pretty straightforward.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: It takes slightly more thought to you come up with
Speaker 1: a good what's called a silver culture approach. Silver culture
Speaker 1: takes into account the idea that you want that area
Speaker 1: that you cut down to grow back to renew so
Speaker 1: that again you hit that annual increase rather than decrease,
Speaker 1: to where the amount of trees you have in stock
Speaker 1: or growing in a particular year is actually more than
Speaker 1: the amount of trees you harvest that same year. Right
Speaker 1: to do that, you have to be selective. You have
Speaker 1: to be smart in the number, amount and type of
Speaker 1: trees you cut down during any given tree cut.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with clear cutting, when you hear that, you would
Speaker 2: just think like, why would anyone argue that that's a
Speaker 2: good idea?
Speaker 1: But people do.
Speaker 2: It's very controversial. If you're in the timber timber industry, yeah,
Speaker 2: forestry industry, forestry industry, you can say you will think
Speaker 2: in good confidence that you can say that clear cutting
Speaker 2: is fine if you do it the right way.
Speaker 1: I don't get that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they said that there are seven conditions that if
Speaker 2: you meet them then it's actually better. That sounds like,
Speaker 2: do you want me to read them?
Speaker 1: Seven conditions I do.
Speaker 2: When regenerating tree species that need full sunlight to stimulate
Speaker 2: seed sprouting and seedling growth. When dealing with sparse or exposed,
Speaker 2: shallow rooted trees that are in danger being damaged by wind,
Speaker 2: when trying to produce an even age stand, and a
Speaker 2: stand I found as a group of trees that are
Speaker 2: the same species, age, and condition that you can manage
Speaker 2: as a unit. That's a stand of trees. Okay, when
Speaker 2: regenerating stands of tree species that are dependent on wind
Speaker 2: blown seed root suckers or cones that need fire to
Speaker 2: drop seed, when faced with salvaging overmature stands or stands
Speaker 2: killed by insects, disease, or fire, when converting to another
Speaker 2: tree species by planting or seeding, and finally to provide
Speaker 2: habitat for wildlfe species that our edge new ground and
Speaker 2: high density even age stands. I couldn't make sense out
Speaker 2: of anything.
Speaker 1: Well, one of it really stuck out to me, and
Speaker 1: it was that for when you're cutting down an entire
Speaker 1: area that's been hit by pests or disease, that one
Speaker 1: makes sense to me, especially if you're trying to contain
Speaker 1: an epidemic. Yeah, sure, clear cut, that makes sense. Everything else,
Speaker 1: I mean, there were some there's some logic to it.
Speaker 1: At least it's not just total madness.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Opponents to clear cutting will say it increases soil erosion,
Speaker 2: water degradation, increases silt and streams and rivers. Aesthetics is
Speaker 2: the main reason that most people are opposed to it,
Speaker 2: or that many people are sure is that it just
Speaker 2: looks like a wasteland.
Speaker 1: Right. Well, the problem is also with clear cutting, it
Speaker 1: sets the stage for invasive species of say like fast
Speaker 1: growing weeds to overcome seedlings, and it keeps the forest
Speaker 1: from regenerating. Yeah, So therefore clearcutting most people, I guess,
Speaker 1: except for the people who came up with those seven conditions,
Speaker 1: tend to believe that it's an unsustainable method of harvesting timber.
Speaker 2: Right. A more sustainable method is shelter wood cutting.
Speaker 1: That's a type of silvic culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's when they use partial cuttings over time.
Speaker 2: We're talking over ten or twenty years, only two to
Speaker 2: four harvests where things can naturally regenerate during that timeframe.
Speaker 1: Right. That sounds like a good idea. It is. There's
Speaker 1: also seed tree seed tree harvesting, and then selection harvesting,
Speaker 1: which is where you basically go in and say this tree,
Speaker 1: that tree, that tree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that are more marketable. But opponents or proponents of
Speaker 2: clearcutting 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 your artificially selecting. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: you're disrupting the balance or the ecology of the forest
Speaker 1: by saying just these great oaks leave all these other
Speaker 1: crummy elms. But the thing is is you're also affecting
Speaker 1: the ecology by cutting down everything the ecosystem.
Speaker 2: I would like to hear from someone that really knows
Speaker 2: their stuff, that is a proponent of clear cutting to
Speaker 2: explain it better to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah than the internet did. Please do? So you do
Speaker 1: when you do use any kind of silver cultural technique,
Speaker 1: and you're not just clearcutting, you have to go through
Speaker 1: the forest and figure out what trees you're going to
Speaker 1: take a lot of times, and even with clear cutting,
Speaker 1: they will leave trees that are say six inches in
Speaker 1: diameter or less in size they're too young. It's like
Speaker 1: how you leave fawns when you're deer hunting. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the exact same thing.
Speaker 2: I love the name of that process when determining and
Speaker 2: surveying the land to work it all out, It's called cruising.
Speaker 1: Cruise the forest, right, everybody you know drives around the forest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the pack of cigarettes rolled up in their shirt sleeves.
Speaker 2: Next comes felling, and I got confused with tree felling
Speaker 2: in the correct way. So I put a little post
Speaker 2: on Facebook, and I had a guy named Gabriel Fribley
Speaker 2: who worked as a forest service fire and fuel management dude,
Speaker 2: and he said, I've cut hundreds, if not thousands, of trees.
Speaker 2: So you want to hear what he says, Yeah, because
Speaker 2: we would screw it up.
Speaker 1: I guarantee it.
Speaker 2: Okay, are you about to say that you know better
Speaker 2: than this guy.
Speaker 1: I don't know better than this guy, but this this
Speaker 1: article was definitely wrong from everything I found.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly why I asked, he said. Terminology changes
Speaker 2: depending on where you are and who you're talking to.
Speaker 2: There are a number of different ways to do so,
Speaker 2: but the safest and most common is to cut a
Speaker 2: wedge out of a tree measure about a third of
Speaker 2: the diameter. Measuring about a third of the diameter of
Speaker 2: the tree in the direction you want the tree to fall.
Speaker 2: Then you that's where I would just stop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my brain just shut down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, then you. Cutting this wedge will require two cuts,
Speaker 2: a flat cut and then a sloping cut that meets
Speaker 2: the flat cut and freeze the wedge. The combination of
Speaker 2: these two cuts is commonly called the face cut.
Speaker 1: Okay, So then 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 The bottom cut is
Speaker 1: ninety degrees, the top cut is forty five degrees I think, so, okay.
Speaker 2: The wedge acts as a hinge, so the tree falls
Speaker 2: in a safe, controlled manner. Then there is the third cut,
Speaker 2: most commonly called the back cut, which is a straight
Speaker 2: cut in the opposite side of the tree, about halfway
Speaker 2: through the diameter of the tree, maybe a little more.
Speaker 1: And that's about two inches above the bottom cut on
Speaker 1: the other side. Okay from what I saw.
Speaker 2: And he said, ideally you want to leave twenty percent
Speaker 2: of the diameter of the tree intact between the back
Speaker 2: cut and the wedge. And that's called holding wood. And
Speaker 2: I think he said hold what is just what it
Speaker 2: sounds like. It holds a tree together to make like
Speaker 2: it's not coming down on your head. Basically, it holds
Speaker 2: it together till you're ready. And he said, if you've
Speaker 2: done these two correctly, three actually you should be able
Speaker 2: to simply push the tree over with your hands. Wow,
Speaker 2: or drive a wedge into the back to bring the
Speaker 2: tree down.
Speaker 1: I'll bet that's pretty awesome to push a huge tree
Speaker 1: down with your hands.
Speaker 2: And yell timber.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So thank you to Gabriel Gabriel Fribley. Yeah, thanks Gabriel,
Speaker 2: and for firefighting forest fires.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's pretty neat. Or starting them, Oh come on, No,
Speaker 1: the Forestry Service does control burns.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I thought you meant like, because there have
Speaker 2: been cases where they've found arson and it was actually
Speaker 2: a fireman.
Speaker 1: Or his mother a firefighter. Do you remember that. No,
Speaker 1: there was a dude who was a wildfire firefighter who
Speaker 1: was not getting enough work.
Speaker 2: I think that's what I was thinking. Was it the mom?
Speaker 1: The mom went and said a fire so that her
Speaker 1: son could make some money.
Speaker 2: God bless her. Not really, but you know the mom
Speaker 2: that just wants to take care of business first onn right,
Speaker 2: that's nice.
Speaker 1: So, Chuck, you've gone through. You cut a bunch of trees.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: The first thing the loggers do is they hop all
Speaker 1: over the trees and go h pip pip, and they
Speaker 1: cut all the limbs off.
Speaker 2: Yes, right, it's called bucking yep.
Speaker 1: And then once you've got the tree bucked, you cut
Speaker 1: it into huge logs yep, from top to bottom. And
Speaker 1: then you tie the logs up or you chain them
Speaker 1: to a tractor, and you skid them along a skidding
Speaker 1: trail to what's called the landing area.
Speaker 2: All right, and they pre plan these skidding trails. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is very important, not just willy nilly, because they
Speaker 2: are trying to protect the forest at the same time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because if you have a bunch of tractors driving
Speaker 1: out with lots and lots of heavy logs, heavy heavy
Speaker 1: logs attached to them, you're going to compact the soil.
Speaker 2: Like this was a tree ten minutes ago, right now
Speaker 2: it's a log.
Speaker 1: Yes, huge, And so if you're going to compact some
Speaker 1: area of soil, you might as well just compact the
Speaker 1: same area soil rather than a bunch of areas of soil,
Speaker 1: so that the rest of the forest can stay healthy.
Speaker 1: And when you get to the landing area, these logs
Speaker 1: are going to be basically graded and sorted, and some
Speaker 1: of them are either going to be sent straight to
Speaker 1: the pulp mills to be created into paper, right or
Speaker 1: fiberboard or something like that, and then others may be
Speaker 1: sent in the higher grade stuff will probably be sent
Speaker 1: to sawmills or concentration yards, which are basically the second
Speaker 1: stage of these landing areas where these people say we're
Speaker 1: going to put all these this specific species of trees
Speaker 1: over here, because this one sawmill likes only oaks, so
Speaker 1: we're going to 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And if this sounds dangerous, yeah it is. And
Speaker 2: depending on what year you're looking at, logging is either
Speaker 2: the one or two, aside from commercial fishing, most dangerous
Speaker 2: job in the United States at least.
Speaker 1: Either way, you can find documentary television shows about these
Speaker 1: professions on Discovery Channel. That's right, check your local list.
Speaker 2: And other channels. This past year, I think it was
Speaker 2: commercial fishing. Airline pilot was number three.
Speaker 1: I find that very unnerving.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, Yeah, that's what I thought. It's like I
Speaker 2: thought planes didn't crash much.
Speaker 1: What's up with that?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Well, in my fear of flying just came back.
Speaker 2: Farmers and ranchers are four, in case you're wondering, mining
Speaker 2: machine operator, then roofers sanitation collectors, which I thought was interesting.
Speaker 1: Are you sure it's not like military jet pilot.
Speaker 2: Dude, soldier wasn't even listed.
Speaker 1: In the top ten an airline pilot.
Speaker 2: But like I said, I think they go by deaths
Speaker 2: in that previous year. I don't care, so it probably
Speaker 2: depends on if we're at war or you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, but airline pilot was still in there, it was dude.
Speaker 2: And then truckers and industrial machinists.
Speaker 1: Especially ice road truckers probably yeah, for real, I'm sure
Speaker 1: among truckers that they probably have the higher mortality rate.
Speaker 2: Well, you were shilling for Discovery.
Speaker 1: I think that was on History.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, you're shilling more for Discovery now than when
Speaker 2: they owned us, which is weird.
Speaker 1: It is weird.
Speaker 2: What do you think podcaster is?
Speaker 1: Podcaster? Pretty? Yeah, cushy, unless apparently you're on a commercial airline.
Speaker 2: Like a one to ten million chants of death. Yes,
Speaker 2: if you're a podcaster.
Speaker 1: On the job death, you know, we could figure that
Speaker 1: out if we knew what math was.
Speaker 2: I don't I could. I'm trying to think if, like
Speaker 2: how we would die from doing this flying somewhere to
Speaker 2: do a live podcast.
Speaker 1: Probably right, I would say if somebody locked the door
Speaker 1: and Jerry started a fire in here, right then we
Speaker 1: could probably die.
Speaker 2: From Actually, in our case, it would if Jerry finally
Speaker 2: snaps and just murders us both.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think we could defend Jerry off.
Speaker 1: So Chuck once the stuff hits the saw mill, we'll
Speaker 1: go there. We already kind of hit the pulp mill. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which stink. By the way, one of the foulst smells
Speaker 1: on earth.
Speaker 2: Are those like the can I just say eggfart?
Speaker 1: No way worse than that.
Speaker 2: Oh I thought it was like that real sulfury smell.
Speaker 1: Now that's well watered down in Florida. Okay, this is
Speaker 1: like it's its own smell. All right, you've surely smelled
Speaker 1: it before.
Speaker 2: You ever been to a chicken farm?
Speaker 1: That's okay, you're right, that's not funny. That might be
Speaker 1: the worst smell of all. Didn't you used to work
Speaker 1: on chicken farms doing software or something?
Speaker 2: Yeah, not on farms, Oh okay, but other people in
Speaker 2: our company would go to the farms and like teach
Speaker 2: them how to use the software.
Speaker 1: It smells so bad, Which is.
Speaker 2: Imagine that job going teaching these people that have been
Speaker 2: like literally counting chicken heads for their entire life, teach
Speaker 2: them how to use the computer to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they were not receptive many times.
Speaker 1: Talk about hunting and pecking. Yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: honey in pecking. So at the at the sawmill, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you're cutting up. Well, when you're when you get
Speaker 1: a bunch of logs, you're like, these are some good logs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I can't do much with this bark. It can
Speaker 1: use mulch that kind of thing. Sure, And actually bark,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize this bark represents basically one of two
Speaker 1: organs of the tree. Yes, there's actually three.
Speaker 2: Should we talk about the inside of a tree a
Speaker 2: little bit?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought this was interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: So the bark is the folham, it's the sugar conducting cells,
Speaker 1: flow them, flow them, and and basically it just provides energy.
Speaker 1: It transfers energy throughout the tree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the internal piping. Part of it is
Speaker 2: the flow them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And there's that one Bugs Bunny song. It makes
Speaker 1: like you know that Bugs Bunny assembly line song. I
Speaker 1: remember the totally powerhouse something.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's the sound that that makes if you
Speaker 1: listen very carefully in a forest. True.
Speaker 2: Uh, there's another set of internal piping the tissue called
Speaker 2: the xylum, and they carry The xylum carries the water
Speaker 2: up and down the tree, right, And they are well
Speaker 2: suited to do so because they are like pipes.
Speaker 1: They are shaped like piping, right, So the fulham flow them.
Speaker 1: That's bark. Yeah, the xylum that's the wood inside, and
Speaker 1: in between the two, you have a thin layer that's
Speaker 1: basically stem cells. It's called the cambium, and the cambium
Speaker 1: produces flow them and xylum cells, and it produces xylum
Speaker 1: cells inward. Right. Yeah, So the stuff, the part of
Speaker 1: the tree that's closest to the bark is also the youngest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the heartwood.
Speaker 1: No, that's in center deep. Yeah, that's the sapwood. Further inside,
Speaker 1: deeper into the tree, that's the older xylum, and that's
Speaker 1: the heartwood. It's just the oldest part of the tree. Yes,
Speaker 1: and you when the log gets to the saw, they're
Speaker 1: going to basically separate those two things because there's different
Speaker 1: uses for sapwood and for heartwood. But the first thing
Speaker 1: they're going to do is get rid of the bark.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They put it in a debarking drum and it's
Speaker 2: kind of like a nightclub. It just kind of everything
Speaker 2: rubs together.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They put several different logs in and let the
Speaker 1: logs rub their own bark off of one another.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they put on little music.
Speaker 1: It's pretty horrific. Ma, Like you're a tree.
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden, you have a naked tree.
Speaker 1: Right, you know, strip the skin right off of it.
Speaker 2: And that bark can become a mulch and what else, oh, fuel, fuel.
Speaker 1: Pretty much it okay, decorative mulch and fuel. But once
Speaker 1: you've got that naked log, you're all set. So you
Speaker 1: want to cut the sapwood from the heartwood because the
Speaker 1: heartwood is extraordinarily strong, and you use it for posts
Speaker 1: and timbers and beams and things like that that you
Speaker 1: really are going to put a lot of weight on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: flooring sometimes right sometimes. And actually there's another article I
Speaker 1: read once about this, like this commercial diving company down
Speaker 1: in like central Florida, that their whole job was they
Speaker 1: would go down in the swamp and like raise old
Speaker 1: cypress logs from the nineteenth century. They have just been
Speaker 1: down there since then, and they sell them as like
Speaker 1: reclaimed original like heart of cypress for flooring. People pay
Speaker 1: mind boggling amounts for because this log was felled, you know,
Speaker 1: one hundred something years ago and it just sank. It
Speaker 1: happened to be one of the ones that sank, and
Speaker 1: they couldn't do anything with it. Back then, there were
Speaker 1: so many cypress trees that they just didn't even bother
Speaker 1: with those. So now these guys go down and dive
Speaker 1: and identify them and raise them up and then sell them.
Speaker 1: That junk is heavy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And actually that perfect time to mention my buddy
Speaker 2: Jason from Damn Caster Guitars. He built me a custom
Speaker 2: Telecaster replica and they use old wood from a dam
Speaker 2: in Georgia that had been underwater for like one hundred years.
Speaker 1: That's really cool.
Speaker 2: And this thing is it's the heaviest guitar. It's beautiful,
Speaker 2: but it's tough.
Speaker 1: On my back. Is it worth it though? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Man, it's I mean, it's gorgeous. And the wood they
Speaker 2: get is really just heavy and dense and gorgeous wood.
Speaker 2: And they got this big load of it from a
Speaker 2: dam that they tore down and I think Columbus, Georgia.
Speaker 2: And so they've got all this wood now that they're
Speaker 2: making these sweet guitars out of.
Speaker 1: Would you name your guitar? I haven't named it. I
Speaker 1: don't really name my guitars, although he wanted me to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta name your guitar.
Speaker 2: I got four guitars. There are one through four.
Speaker 1: No, you should name one. Joni and one Chachi at
Speaker 1: least all right, and one I always keep them right
Speaker 1: next to each other.
Speaker 2: And one Phonsie and one Ralph Mouth. Now who was
Speaker 2: Phonsie's Leather Tuscadero.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Pinky tusca Era. Well they're sisters, So was Pinky
Speaker 1: the younger sister.
Speaker 2: I think Leather was the one that looked like Joon
Speaker 2: Jet and Pinky is the one that looked like a
Speaker 2: bombshell like had the you know, the pink sweaters and
Speaker 2: the big poofy hair.
Speaker 1: So which one did he date?
Speaker 2: I think he dated Pinky. Okay, Leather, she she didn't
Speaker 2: need guys.
Speaker 1: She was. I think I remember who you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I don't remember Pinky tusky Air. I definitely remember Leather
Speaker 1: tusky Era. Man whoever wrote that show was.
Speaker 2: A genius, right, Yeah, Well, what they're doing is they're
Speaker 2: satisfying everyone. They're like, you like the ladies rough and Tumble.
Speaker 2: You like them dressed up in pink with like poofy hair.
Speaker 1: Right? Do you like them with an Italian name? Right? Uh?
Speaker 2: Where are we have we debarked.
Speaker 1: Or in like thefties Milwaukee?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Yes, we have debarked to answer your question.
Speaker 2: Okay, So we've debarked. You got a naked log. If
Speaker 2: it's going to be paper, it's going to go to
Speaker 2: a chipper which cuts the log into little little squares
Speaker 2: about two inches by a quarter of an inch thick,
Speaker 2: and they're going to mix those chips up with chemicals
Speaker 2: and stuff. They're going to put it in a digest.
Speaker 2: It's a big pressure cooker and that is what separates
Speaker 2: that cellulose from the lignan that we talked about earlier.
Speaker 2: To get your pulp.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just want to get that lignan out of there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's wet, it's fibrous. They bleach it to the
Speaker 2: proper shade, mix it with water again, form it into
Speaker 2: big mats, and then press them under these incredible rollers
Speaker 2: to press out all that water. Right, and then there
Speaker 2: you go. You've got what will be paper.
Speaker 1: Right. And if you're making lumber, you send your log
Speaker 1: to the scooby doo head rig is what it's called.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, those things are awesome, the thing.
Speaker 1: That people are always tied on going toward. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: sort of, and it 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 sort of roughs it out right,
Speaker 1: and then you have a couple of other types of saws.
Speaker 1: There's a trimmer that squares the ends, and before that
Speaker 1: you have an edger which creates the well the edges
Speaker 1: for your lumber. Yeah, and then of course there's a
Speaker 1: whole other process involved in making roundwood aka posts, which
Speaker 1: are not lumber.
Speaker 2: Evidently, your heartwood is going to be older, obviously, because
Speaker 2: you know how you can tell a tree by the rings,
Speaker 2: those inner rings that we talked about the xylum.
Speaker 1: Right, and it's the cambium is creating more xylum cells.
Speaker 1: They're going on the outside of the heartwood. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: tree is growing outward.
Speaker 2: And there's gonna be more knots in that heartwood too,
Speaker 2: which is so branches past it's sturdier.
Speaker 1: But a lot of people would also be like, I
Speaker 1: don't want to see knots, so they're not going to
Speaker 1: use it.
Speaker 2: For or I do want to see knots, Yeah, depending
Speaker 2: on what you're doing. Sickos like a good knot in
Speaker 2: the right place. For instance, my guitar has a beautiful
Speaker 2: knot in the center of the back that's just gorgeous. Jony,
Speaker 2: now that I would call this one pinky Tuscadero.
Speaker 1: I think, okay, so that's pinky tuscad Era leather.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I actually looked up not so I was like, wait,
Speaker 2: what is a nott, not even thinking well, of course
Speaker 2: it's just a former branch. Oh.
Speaker 1: I didn't think about that either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's either a branch base or a branch bud
Speaker 2: that never happened.
Speaker 1: Huh. Do you know? Not only did I not think
Speaker 1: that that's what it not was, I didn't even think
Speaker 1: to think what it not was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, And the last part of that process
Speaker 2: is you got to dry the stuff out. So you
Speaker 2: stack it up, sorted out, and you dry it in
Speaker 2: a kiln.
Speaker 1: Correct. Yeah, all right, it's like you made something out
Speaker 1: of clay.
Speaker 2: Should we take a break?
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's take a break, man, and then we'll take
Speaker 1: it home. So, Chuck, you kind of mentioned like early
Speaker 1: conservation folks that you or in.
Speaker 2: Awe of John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah, John Muir was cool, weirdo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and these people they reacted to this rampant 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah, up to thirty percent of the original forest land
Speaker 2: by the end of the Civil War was gone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're talking about a billion acres that was
Speaker 1: originally there, So thirty percent of that gone, right, unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And there was what was called ay they were worried
Speaker 1: that there was going to be a quote national famine
Speaker 1: of wood. Yeah, and it wasn't just conservation at the time,
Speaker 1: like plastics had not been developed. Sure, cheap easy metal
Speaker 1: alloys weren't developed until say the mid twentieth century, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we like there was Yeah, we really used wood
Speaker 1: a lot. Yeah, and for also for fuel, for cooking,
Speaker 1: for heating, all that stuff. We needed wood. So it
Speaker 1: was going to be a big deal if we ran
Speaker 1: out of wood. And as a result, a lot of
Speaker 1: people got behind these conservation efforts, and especially the government
Speaker 1: here in the United States. All government levels own forest land,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, the federal government owns the most. Yes,
Speaker 1: And they don't just protect it and say this is
Speaker 1: off limits. They say, you guys can come and pay
Speaker 1: for the right to cut down some trees from here,
Speaker 1: but you're going to follow our rules.
Speaker 2: Yeah, three hundred and twenty three million acres of federally
Speaker 2: owned land in this country is public forest land. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so either like national forest or I guess, to be
Speaker 2: used by the logging industry if you meet the right conditions, I.
Speaker 1: Guess, yeah. But I think even national forests fall under
Speaker 1: that umbrellas well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't mean, yeah, that they were not the same.
Speaker 1: What does happen sometimes is say an animal will be
Speaker 1: placed an animal that calls forest land or timberland and
Speaker 1: its home will be placed on the endangered list, and
Speaker 1: as a result of that, the forest industry will just
Speaker 1: completely shift. And that was the case with the Mexican
Speaker 1: spotted owl in the nineties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what happened to that guy?
Speaker 1: So the Mexican spotted owl was on its way to
Speaker 1: becoming extinct, and it made its home in the western
Speaker 1: softwood temperate forests, right, and the US government decided that
Speaker 1: this was enough of a problem that they put it
Speaker 1: on the endangered species list and protected it. And that
Speaker 1: meant that its habitat was protected, which meant that all
Speaker 1: of this public land that all these logging companies used
Speaker 1: to go and log on, they couldn't log there anymore.
Speaker 1: A lot of page did not like that decision. No,
Speaker 1: they didn't. It was enormous. And you know that a
Speaker 1: federal agency is doing its job when it's being sued
Speaker 1: by conservationists and logging companies, right, yeah, at the same
Speaker 1: time over the same thing. Sure, so or else they're
Speaker 1: not doing their job at all, depending on how you
Speaker 1: look at it. But eventually the Mexican spotted owl was protected,
Speaker 1: its habitat was protected, and so the forestry, the timber
Speaker 1: industry shifted eastward. Yeah, And so there was a shift
Speaker 1: not just in direction on the continent, but also in
Speaker 1: where they were taking timber from. So now more timber
Speaker 1: is taken from privately held lands in the East than
Speaker 1: public held lands in the West because of the Mexican
Speaker 1: Because of this one type of owl, right completely changed
Speaker 1: the complexion of the timber industry in the United States.
Speaker 1: But the timber industry is doing just fine. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a real testimony that like it
Speaker 1: can adapt. Yeah, you know, the Mexican spotted owl can adapt,
Speaker 1: but the timber industry can. Apparently.
Speaker 2: You ever see owls in Atlanta?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have before. Why They're amazing.
Speaker 2: I love owls, gorgeous in that wingspan, it's like it's
Speaker 2: remarkable when you see one fly. Yes, it's like whoa
Speaker 2: that looks that's bigger than most birds.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Have you ever had one like perch outside of
Speaker 1: your window while you're trying to sleep?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I've got We have one that lives behind
Speaker 2: our house.
Speaker 1: Does he keep you up?
Speaker 2: No, we've seen it a couple of times and we
Speaker 2: hear it a lot, which I love.
Speaker 1: It didn't like wake me up or anything. Oh, we
Speaker 1: had one that was keeping us awake.
Speaker 2: Really you shoot it?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Nice went out and shine a flashlight in this general direction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it piped down. Never heard from it again. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: So you got the message, gotcha? And we were oul
Speaker 1: lists after that.
Speaker 2: He's like that guy with the flashlight. He's bad news.
Speaker 2: All getting out of here, all right? So the federal
Speaker 2: government owns a lot of land which is managed managed,
Speaker 2: managed by some different bodies, but it's you know, they
Speaker 2: try to do their best job with things like the
Speaker 2: Healthy Forest Restoration Act, signed in two two thousand and
Speaker 2: three by GW. Bush all right to help protect forest land.
Speaker 1: So chuck, it's about here though that Like this is
Speaker 1: when I was like, I feel like we're really wading
Speaker 1: into un explained territory a dark forest. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of like I suspect a lot of green washing
Speaker 1: going on, and so I started poking around, and I've
Speaker 1: found that the Sustainable Forestry Initiative is very frequently accused
Speaker 1: of greenwashing. Yeah, so you know how like fair trade,
Speaker 1: Like you'll look for a fair trade label and you'll
Speaker 1: be like, I'm gonna pay a little more for this
Speaker 1: because I believe that the people who made it were
Speaker 1: paid a better wage than you know, this competitor that
Speaker 1: wasn't fair trade. That's what the Sustainable Forestry Initiative Seal
Speaker 1: of approval was meant for. That you could look for
Speaker 1: it on like 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 silver cultural techniques that
Speaker 1: promotes sustainable forestry. The thing is is there's some other groups,
Speaker 1: say like forest Ethic is a nonprofit kind of watch
Speaker 1: dog group that has come out and really aggressively said
Speaker 1: that the Sustainable Forestry Initiative is basically just a greenwashing
Speaker 1: front operationally that's funded by paper companies. It was international paper,
Speaker 1: International paper. Yeah, there are a couple of others that
Speaker 1: I think Weyerhauser was one maybe that that fund this
Speaker 1: this approval company or organization. So is it BS From
Speaker 1: what I can tell, really it looks that way, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's very disconcerting. Fortunately, there are some that
Speaker 1: do appear to be utterly legitimate, and the chief among
Speaker 1: them is the Forest Stewardship Council. Okay, they do the
Speaker 1: same thing, but they're the real deal.
Speaker 2: So this article you sent me that there are a
Speaker 2: lot of major brands dumping the s FI. I saw
Speaker 2: that and I was like, well, that's terrible, but they're
Speaker 2: moving to the better standard. Is that correct?
Speaker 1: That's the impression I have. Okay, that makes sense now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: rather than bearing the SFI seal of approval, like or
Speaker 1: buying paper that bears that seal of 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 FI. It's like
Speaker 1: Office Depot is no longer buying s FI sourced paper.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing they're probably going with the f SC, the
Speaker 1: Forest Stewardship Council.
Speaker 2: So Hewlett Packard at and T Pitney Bowls all state,
Speaker 2: they buy a lot of paper, shouting them out right
Speaker 2: because they're doing the right thing. It sounds like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that makes more sense. I was confused. I thought they
Speaker 2: were dropping the SFI, which was a good thing. But
Speaker 2: the ye, this is all clear.
Speaker 1: Now rank you Hey, don't thank me. Thank forest ethics,
Speaker 1: who apparently routinely get seased in desist letters from paper
Speaker 1: companies in the forests, or the I'm sure Sustainable Forestry Initiative,
Speaker 1: and then chuck. The Forest Service itself is often criticized
Speaker 1: for being in bed with the timber industry. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that Alaska thing I was teasing earlier, Yeah, yeah, what
Speaker 1: is it? There is something called the Big Thorn Timber Sale.
Speaker 1: Six thousand acres sixty two hundred acres of seven hundred
Speaker 1: year old forest in the Tongas in southern Alaska up
Speaker 1: for sale for clear cutting. Wow, clear cutting. And the
Speaker 1: problem is is like old growth forest, Yes it is.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. The problem is is not just that
Speaker 1: people are worried that the forest won't recover, but that
Speaker 1: this forest is also used by other industries like fishing industry,
Speaker 1: tourism industry. These people are like, we're using this acreage
Speaker 1: can't just come in and cut it down. Here's a
Speaker 1: couple of lawsuits to stop that sale, and I guess
Speaker 1: the federal judge in twenty fifteen, I think March ruled, Nope,
Speaker 1: go ahead, you're well within your rights. Maybe disgusting, but
Speaker 1: go ahead and sell sixty two hundred acres of old
Speaker 1: growth forest in Alaska for clear cutting.
Speaker 2: With the presumption that it will go to a logging company. Yes,
Speaker 2: you'd be great as if like, oh, I don't know,
Speaker 2: Warren Buffett bought it and said I'm going to build
Speaker 2: a small house in the middle of it, and that's it.
Speaker 1: That guy should wear a cape. So deforestation is a thing,
Speaker 1: and I agree with you. We should definitely do an
Speaker 1: episode just on that, right. Yeah, but that's not the
Speaker 1: only threat to the forests of the world.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: It is a serious threat, but man made threats are
Speaker 1: not the only threat.
Speaker 2: No, there's a few more natural threats. Insects, of course,
Speaker 2: specifically invasive species like the Eurasian gypsy moth came here
Speaker 2: in the nineteenth century and when it's a caterpillar, it
Speaker 2: eats the leaves of hardwood trees, like a lot of them,
Speaker 2: to the tune of since nineteen thirty defoliated more than
Speaker 2: eighty million acres. That is so many East Coast forest Yeah,
Speaker 2: eighty million acres just on the East coast.
Speaker 1: This little caterpillar.
Speaker 2: Yeap, So that's an insect disease is a problem. I
Speaker 2: know here in Georgia we've sudden oak death is a
Speaker 2: big problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And since it was originated in nineteen or I guess
Speaker 2: found in nineteen fifty five, ninety covered.
Speaker 1: What I say, fifty five, oh, a full forty years after.
Speaker 2: That ninety five. Yeah, I remember when this happened. It
Speaker 2: was probably Clinton's fault. It was Clinton's fault. Since then,
Speaker 2: has killed more than one million oak trees.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's no gypsy moth, but that's a lot now.
Speaker 1: And then lastly, invasive species are a real problem.
Speaker 2: Kudzuo that was the other one I want to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh, you want to do one on kudsy heck, yeah.
Speaker 1: So kudzu is a great example of an invasive species.
Speaker 1: It's a non native, fast growing vine that in I
Speaker 1: think it's native Japan, has plenty of natural predators that
Speaker 1: like to eat it. Sure, right here in the United States,
Speaker 1: in the Southeastern United States, where it was given as
Speaker 1: a gift by Japanese businessmen in the thirties. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have any natural predators, and it just grows like crazy.
Speaker 1: And the problem is it grows up and over trees
Speaker 1: and creates its own It uses the tree structure and
Speaker 1: then creates its own canopy around it. It basically creates
Speaker 1: a dice in sphere around a tree to but it's
Speaker 1: a reverse dice in sphere. It's accepting the sun from
Speaker 1: the outside rather than harvesting it from the inside.
Speaker 2: Tree death is what it means.
Speaker 1: I know, don't you hate seeing that? Like I'd just
Speaker 1: like shake my fist at kuts you, like, get off
Speaker 1: of that tree, just stay on the ground.
Speaker 2: But do you ever take time to go out there
Speaker 2: and with your scissors Josh, yes, and cut it off
Speaker 2: that tree?
Speaker 1: Very frequently.
Speaker 2: Mile a minute weed is another good example, apparently another
Speaker 2: Asian import that has choked the Mid Atlantic region.
Speaker 1: I guess the lesson here is this, an Asian business
Speaker 1: person ever gives you a non native plant as a gift,
Speaker 1: Smile politely, say thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: Also don't make eye contact, all right, say thank you
Speaker 1: very much, But I cannot accept this gift.
Speaker 2: But would you like to go have a lovely sushi meal.
Speaker 1: Nice, you got anything else?
Speaker 2: I got nothing else?
Speaker 1: So that is timber. If you want go, type that
Speaker 1: word into the search bar at houstuffworks dot com. And
Speaker 1: since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this coolest tattoo I've seen in a while. Hey, guys,
Speaker 2: listen to Satanic Panic today. And I loved it. I
Speaker 2: loved that episode, by the way.
Speaker 1: It was good one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we gotten some good feedback. Jerry's even nodding, and
Speaker 2: she hates most of what we do.
Speaker 1: She's not even aware of most of what we did.
Speaker 2: She was born in nineteen eighty two, this writer, and
Speaker 2: she says, I remember family members talking about parts of
Speaker 2: our home state of Kentucky that were lousy with Satan worshippers.
Speaker 2: One of the things I like best in the episode
Speaker 2: was when we talked about the influence works of fiction
Speaker 2: had on superstition. Made me think of how I've encountered
Speaker 2: this in my own life. I have a great love
Speaker 2: of wija boards. And in fact, I don't think she's
Speaker 2: heard the episode on wijiaboards because she didn't reference it.
Speaker 1: Oh, that was a good episode.
Speaker 2: So Carrie, we did an episode on that. You should
Speaker 2: listen to it. I think they are pretty and have
Speaker 2: I have great memories of playing with one as a kid.
Speaker 2: I have quite a few at home, including I have
Speaker 2: quite a few wija aboard items, including a tattoo on
Speaker 2: my chest, and she attached to photo. She's got like
Speaker 2: the upper lettering of the wija board, like right across,
Speaker 2: like under her neckline, at the top of her chest. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like when she wears like a dress with that exposed.
Speaker 2: It's just lovely looking, like that font and everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I saw the photo and I thought it was really
Speaker 2: cool looking. But of course she's people are gonna say, like,
Speaker 2: what's up with this girl had boards? This has led
Speaker 2: to some very interesting conversations, of course, with people. A
Speaker 2: lot of people really like it, like me, but some
Speaker 2: have been a little freaked out by it. Thanks to
Speaker 2: movies like The Exorcist and more recently Ouija, the wija
Speaker 2: board has been given a lot more power, and I
Speaker 2: feel that it really deserves I've had my tattoo for
Speaker 2: over a year and have not noticed any paranormal activity
Speaker 2: surrounding me, and I've not been possessed, and I have
Speaker 2: not had a demon use my chest as a doorway
Speaker 2: to our world, so I think I will be Okay,
Speaker 2: we'll see. Keep up the great work that is from
Speaker 2: Carrie parentheses like the movie.
Speaker 1: A lot of horror movie references in that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought it was a very cool tattoo.
Speaker 1: Nice man, Well Carrie, right, that's right, Okay, thanks a lot,
Speaker 1: Kerrie for writing in. And if you want to write
Speaker 1: to us, you can send us an email to Stuff
Speaker 1: podcast the Housetufforse dot com and has always joined us
Speaker 1: at our home on the web, stuff Youshould Know dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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