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