Is wood more hygienic than plastic?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The lie about plastic

We have been told, including by the so-called experts, that plastic is by far more hygienic than wood as wood being a natural material. It is hardly surprising seeing how man-made materials and especially plastics of all kinds were and are feted as the be all and end all.

As far as plastic chopping boards and kitchen utensils are concerned it is very difficult indeed to get them to go moldy or such but does that really mean that they are better? No, for this is about the only advantage of a plastic chopping board compared to a wooden one. But then again you do not have to leave your wooden chopping board laying about in the damp. After you clean it you hang it up, as people used to do it.

As said, and here ends the good part of plastic as to chopping boards and other things in the kitchen. At least since Plastic Planet and other criticism as regards to plastic and especially the noxious chemicals that it contains that constitute a risk to health plastic has lost its celebrity status.

Wood is more hygienic and environmentally friendly

While it is true that there are some woods that should on no account come into contact with foods during chopping and cutting – as fruit bowls many of those will be fine – such as Yew and Horse Chestnut and a few others as they are poisonous most woods, however, have very high antibacterial and antiseptic properties and the leading one here is the much maligned Sycamore (Acer pseudoplantanus) and the heartwood of the Pine (Pinus silvestris). Other woods too exhibit the same antibacterial properties, though some to a somewhat lesser extent.

Wood, in comparison to plastic and also stainless steel, which often contains heavy metals such as chromium and nickel – that's why using cast iron for cooking pots and pans is so much better than anything else – is biodegradable in that wooden utensils can be simply put onto the compost heap at the end of their life to return to the Earth (or burned). Plastic, as we all know, does not biodegrade and cannot be composted (regardless of what industry is trying to tell us) and even stainless steel needs to be recycled in an energy intense process.

Some decades ago all the butchers and catering establishments have been forced, by law, to throw out all their wooden blocks and boards but some clever souls decided to carry out a test – so I have been told – and they dumped a culture of salmonella each onto a wooden butcher's block and onto a plastic block and left them overnight. The ones on the plastic one apparently had read Genesis and had gone forth and multiplied while the ones on the wood were all rather dead. Killed by the tannin in the wood and the fact that wood, be water absorbent, had deprived them of their growing medium, namely moisture.

There you have it. Not only does wood look good, it also is good, and especially in the kitchen. You can now, with a clear conscience, dig out those wooden chopping and cutting boards that you put way, clean them gently, sand them down and oil them and use them again.

© 2014

Using the whole tree, and not just for firewood

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

All too often woodsmen and coppice workers today can but think firewood and, maybe, a few other things as to the use the trees that they cut, whether in coppicing or general felling operations.

However, aside from the roots – which in coppicing you leave anyway as the new growth comes from them – and the tips and leaves (if any of the latter) the entire can be and should be used for more than just firewood, even though wood fuel, in the form of firewood, is important. Other products, though, are what adds value to the timber.

Producing firewood – logs and kindling – is, obviously, a quick and easy way of turning the wood from the lot worked into some sort of an income. But other products give a much better margin of return and even more so if the coppice worker is also the person producing them. At the same time such wooden, or treen, goods also keep the carbon locked up in the wood for a much longer period.

Like the early foresters, who were employed by the Navy and the mines, we need to develop the eye and to be able to judge what each and every piece of wood from a tree could possibly be made into to get the best value in both uses and return out of a tree.

Every branch and every piece must be considered as to how it can be used and for what purpose. If we think just firewood and beanpoles we blinker ourselves to other, more more valuable, possibilities.

Any piece of wood, of timber, that is not turned into wood to go up in flames and smoke, literally, but is made into something that may be used for many years, decades even, or longer still, keeps carbon locked up and this benefits all.

Treen goods of all kinds, made by hand to last, much like furniture, will lock up the carbon that the tree absorbed (sequestered) out of the atmosphere during its growth for as long as the product “lives” and thus keeps it out of the atmosphere.

Although firewood is, in a sense, a carbon neutral fuel, other products are still better, especially as they also ad more and greater value to the timber harvested.

Firewood and beanpoles are, obviously, a lot easier and faster to produce that are other products, be those wooden kitchen utensils, garden aids, such as dibbers, etc., tool handles, walking sticks, baskets, furniture, and much more. The latter products require more forethought (no malice needed though a mallet could come in handy at times), and work, and also additional tools and skills. They do, however, add a much higher value and more joy.

Today's woodsman, like his predecessor, is never going to become a millionaire, even if he own the wood(s), but could reap a much greater return on investment if he would consider uses for his trees and timber aside from just firewood, charcoal and bean poles.

© 2013

Coppice management

by Michael Smith, RFS, RFA, EcoFor

The management of woodlands and forests by means of coppicing – Niederwaldbewirtschaftung in German – is often, especially elsewhere in Europe, but also in the UK, only seen as a means to produce firewood and, maybe, beanpoles and some charcoal.

However, the products that can be made by means of coppice management of woods and forests is far greater and, in fact, this was the way that we managed our woods and forests in Britain for thousands of years, and that very well and successfully. The woods and forests thrived under this case more and better than under any other form of management.

While other countries used this form of woodland and forest management also in the great majority of European countries it has now been abandoned, and has been thus already for many, many decades, in favor of a management that can be done with more mechanized means than coppicing.

The abandonment of coppicing in British woodlands has cost us dearly in terms of almost destroyed woods. In some areas the old coppice stools are almost beyond redemption and this could result in the loss of the entire or almost the entire wood.

The Forestry Commission never did much in that department but then it was not its brief. Its job was the production of timber for the mines and some other applications, including the war effort.

After the Second World War coppicing in our woods started to decline drastically and dramatically, much due to plastic products, and bamboo canes for beanpoles and such rather than wood.

Wooden tent pegs, which were one of the products from coppice woods, were replaced, even by military and scouts with metal and plastic and the same went for so many other products that were once produced from the wood from our coppiced woodlands.

Baskets, once woven from willow from coppicing and pollarding operations, and some other pliable woods, were replaced by plastic and the same for the trugs and such used by bakers and others.

Now, with the revival and renaissance of wood stoves firewood is in great demand but our neglected native woods cannot even provide a small proportion though they could provide it all (at current demand levels) if they would but be managed and we import firewood from as far afield as Poland and Western Russia. Not very sustainable at all.

The same goes for charcoal and most of the charcoal on sale in Britain today, and barbecuing is very much the in thing, also in restaurants, has to come from abroad and, in that case, it comes, primarily, from tropical hardwoods.

The problem, aside from an environmental one, is that that kind of charcoal does not, unlike the local one, light easily and requires chemical accelerants in the form of barbecue fire lighters. Those, however, leave a residue and not just on the coal.

Before the “advent”, so to speak, of coal, charcoal fired the Industrial Revolution in Britain and while it, probably, caused some deforestation, most of it was sourced from coppice operations.

Wooden spoons, spatulas and other wooden kitchen utensils were once made by local craftsmen from local coppiced timber but from a certain time onwards those were made from often imported woods by factories and now the great majority of those utensils are made, in fact, abroad, in the main, nowadays, in China.

In times past almost everything wood came from local woodlands, with the exception of some furniture, that were under coppice management and the woods and the craftsmen prospered.

Coppicing is one of the best ways to maintain the health of woodlands and this system of management has great benefits for the environment. In addition to this this old way of woodland management also will benefit the local economies and that is too very important indeed.

Our woodlands and forest must be brought back under this age old management system in order to restore them to health and for the local economy of craftsmen and -women to be revitalized.

Unfortunately misguided environmentalists for years have been working against this as they, having read only those books that back up their own beliefs, believe that no tree should ever be cut down, for any reason.

In fact many have vehemently campaigned and forced, for lack of a better word, local authorities, woodland and forest owners and managers to leave woods in their “natural” state or allow them too “return” to a wildwood state. But there is no wildwood in the British Isles and has not been any for at least a millennium or more. Not that that has interested those.

Woodlands, many of them state with venom in their voices, do not need to be managed. Nature will do it all itself. Which is a false notion as, alas, left to their own devices those, formerly managed woods, will decay and that will the end of them.

Coppice stools that are not cut will, in the end, break apart and that often almost simultaneously and thus the woods are no more but just a piece of useless “wilderness”.

As soon as brambles and bracken take over – and this is very soon if a wood is not managed – and then not controlled the loss of habitat follows in a very short space of time. Brambles and bracken stop light getting to the woodland floor, and the same is true when the woodland is not being thinned, and anything of value will die and be smothered. But, they keep claiming, Nature will manage it all itself; it just takes a while.

This is not true, however, and man has to keep the regime of management that our forefathers began many hundreds of years ago if we wish to retain those woods and forests.

For thousands of years we have managed our woodlands and forests, more often that not by coppicing, and they thrived under our care and if we want them to thrive again we must bring those woods and forests that have been neglected back under this management regime and it must be done now, before it is too late.

© 2013

Traditional woodland crafts are, once again, becoming a growth industry

Finally traditional woodland crafts are being regarded as valuable again and not before time

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

They are a source of food, fuel, building materials, artistic inspiration and stress-relief, and thus is is hard to believe that the link between Britain's people and its woodlands was ever in any doubt. But it was so.

In the years following the Second World War, traditional woodland jobs such as wheel-wrights and bodgers, clog-makers and other woodland workers, were becoming obsolete as, apparently, synthetic materials were far more exciting to have in your home than boring old wood, and the Forestry Commission was busy creating Sitka spruce plantations.

We must, however, not forget that the Forestry Commission was never tasked with woodlands and woodland jobs and -crafts but to be producing timber for the mines and the trenches.

Within a generation, or less even, the relevance of woodlands to the daily lives of most people had become vague. Most products that ones were made of wood had become replaced by plastics and other synthetics.

However, and thank the gods, in the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century our woodlands are beginning to enjoy somewhat of a renaissance.

Our woodlands, which have existed for thousands upon thousands of years and have been managed for that time also, and that predominately through coppicing, need to ALL come under that management again as, otherwise, they will not survive.

In many parts of England there are old coppice woods that have not been worked now for fifty years and more and if they are not dealt with very soon and efficiently then those coppice stools that are presently standing will break apart and that will be the end of those woods.

The resurgence of interest in using woodlands and woodland culture has attracted a very diverse range of people, from hobby foresters and entrepreneurs to some very skilled crafts people but what they all need is support from us, as consumers, to buy their goods, and from government as those woodlanders are the custodians of our future.

The new woodlanders cannot make a living from the woods if we will not buy the goods that they provide, from firewood and charcoal to treen goods of all kinds.

The New Woodlanders include not just those of the ancient crafts but artists who work with wood, furniture makers, basket weavers and specialist producers, including those who make wooden jewelery, etc.

When Herbert Edlin wrote his classic book Woodland Crafts in 1949 he was sure that many of the crafts he had recorded would not survive the ravages of the Second World War and in a few cases he was right, but in actual fact many of the woodland crafts have persisted or been revived including the skills of chair-makers, turners, charcoal makers, basket weavers, horse-loggers and herb gatherers.

In economic terms, woodlands can offer income to both groups and individuals. However, the consumer has to get behind those that are reviving the use of our woodlands and buy the products that they produce.

A Forestry Commission survey found that nearly a quarter of people questioned had gathered wild plant material from woodlands or forests in the past five years (the most popular things to collect were berries, mushrooms and firewood).

While the economic recession may have taken the main focus off the environment and on to the economy, I believe that it will not halt the great resurgence in woodland culture that is taking place at present

In fact there may be more of us looking for ways of supplementing our income or diet, or reducing our fuel bills, by returning to the woods and there will certainly be more stressed-out folk seeking the solace they can find in the forest.

Over the years, ever since about World War Two, we have forgotten the value of our woodlands (and forests) other than, maybe, for recreation and this could be seen very much during the protests against the proposed “sell off” of Forestry Commission lands.

But, aside from the amenity value of the woods, we must come to understand, and especially many misguided environmentalists, that we must work and manage our woodlands once again in order for them to survive.

Coppice woodlands that are not being worked in the traditional way will die. It is as simple as that. The stools will become top-heavy and, literally, break apart and that will be the end of the trees and thus of the woods.

© 2012

Wood-Mizer Releases MP100 Log Moulder Planer

Wood-Mizer Products Incorporated, the world’s leading portable sawmill manufacturer, has released the new MP100 Moulder/Planer for further shaping and finishing cants, beams, and columns. This product is an ideal tool for woodworkers and log home builders.

The MP100 can mould or plane material up to 20.5” wide and up to 23.5” tall. The maximum moulding width is 16”. The MP100 package is currently only $6,895 and includes the MP100 head, four flat knives, the standard bed length of 17’8” (extensions available), two log clamps, and two profile clamps.

In order to mould beams, various profile knives can be purchased to produce different moulding options, and simply slide and lock into place. The Combo Knife Set includes the Tongue and Grove knife set, a D-face knife set, and 16 knife clamps. The Deluxe Knife Set includes all the knife profiles from the Combo set, plus the Swedish Cope knife set. The Deluxe Set gives you the ability to mould all the shapes shown below.

Wood-Mizer LT15 sawmill owners can purchase the MP100 head and mast only, and mount it right on their LT15. By using the LT15 and MP100 together, a log can be milled and planed or moulded without leaving the bed. Existing customers can add the MP100 head assembly to an existing LT15 sawmill bed, the price for the MP100 head is as little as $4,495. Call or visit woodmizer.com for more details and watch this video.

Wood-Mizer, founded in 1982, is the leading manufacturer of portable band sawmills and offers an extensive line of portable and industrial mills, blades, resaws, and edgers covering a wide range of cutting capabilities. The company has sold more than 50,000 sawmills worldwide. For more information about Wood-Mizer Products, call 800.553.0182 or visit www.woodmizer.com.

This press release is presented without editing for your information. The GREEN (LIVING) REVIEW does not recommend, approve or endorse the products and/or services offered. You should use your own judgment and evaluate products and services carefully before deciding to purchase.