Timber! How Timber Works

Welcome to you stuff you should know Groomhouse Stuff Works dot com. 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?

You're tired? Are you well? Your dad all dads are tired, aren't they. That's nothing to do with it. Oh yeah, why are you tiring? Just Uh, I didn't get enough to sleep last night. Okay, but not because dad's We'll leave it at that 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 is pretty neat. I gotta say. I was excited about this because A it's dense like a forest. B it's

cool like a forest. And see, it provides a great canopy over our heads. It does a canopy of knowledge. I reverse engineered that last one. Oh 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 anytime 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 UM forestry rights. This is a minefield, my friends. It really is. Because I I this This UM article was written a number of years back and it's very friendly to the forestry industry. Yeah, it's not like extraordinarily conservation minded um, 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 is pretty neutral. I don't know man like um. But here's how confused I was. And we'll get to this later. But these initiatives and certification programs, 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 all right? Does that need somebody to tell me what to like and not? Like? I can tell you just save it all right. I'm saving.

Let's talk about forests in general, Chuck, Yes, uh, well, let's talk about our country a little bit in the United States. Well, even more, let's talk about our continent, 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 are so many what was the passenger pigeons that that died off that were just driven to extinction because of humans. I'm pretty sure was pas I got

confused in the episode about which it was 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 roam with pigeons because there was no one there to hunt anymore. Right, 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 four had all died off, largely died off, and then what we thought was just this crazy stretch of forest that had always been there. It was actually fairly new. But it's probably not the case. Well at any rate. Way back in the six Dreds, about of land north of Mexico was trees. Yeah, not too bad. No, that's a lot of trees. Uh. And trees are great

because they give us wood. I mean they led to uh, you know, pre metal. It was all about wood. Yeah, you know, ships, buildings, houses, wagons. William Harris, who wrote this article, Yeah, it makes the very smart point that we came and cut down trees and basically built a new nation, certainly a new economy, settle new nations out of what definitely for sure like literally out of wood. If you're talking the world and Planet Earth about is forest land and Russia 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 the most dense. I believe that they have one thousand and one million, which is a little over a billion hectares hectars point four acres. Right, 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 the

forest that includes everything, And that's in the US. No, no, no, that's the world one billions in the world. Yeah, because in the US there if you 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 death finition 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 uh, seven sixty six in Canada. And uh, that's that's forest, my friend. Boom, we're done. Yeah, it was a minefield, but we navigate it. But this is about timber and that's different than for us. It is different than for us. So a forest is that definition that you just said. It's an acre of land with ten

percent tree cover. Right. Timberland is a type of forest land, but it has to have a certain amount of usable um trees on it or timber to make it timberland. Right. 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 Chuck's House 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 forests. 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 and then go to their friend's house. And they were swimming pools and tennis courts and communist centers and it was just like me and my brother in woods. But I guess I can. 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're 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. Was growing up. It's like, there's no sneaking out. I just opened the door and went out from my room, just like, go ahead, come and go as you please. No, I wasn't supposed to, but there wasn't a lot of sneaking involved. It was opening the door and quietly closing it. You didn't have to. I always wanted to shimmy up a drain pipe to my room. Have you shimmying up

or down? Down is a lot easier than not that I could have shimmied when I was ten or twelve, though, ain't no shimmy in anymore. We're so people have sent in that guide posts cover. Is that you know? It's just some other playing the trumpet? Yeah? I never played the trumpet. It doesn't look like you, but I was like now, 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.

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. Uh And um, people estimate two thirds of our nation is forest land. Uh and five hundred and two million acres of that is timberland. Yeah, that's not bad, not bad at all. Now. 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. Um. 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 an 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 the gain and an increase, I'm just saying the industry term. Yeah. I looked up net industry gain or yeah, net annual gain and they said you must be city folk, right, it increase. Uh, so that 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. And um, actually, the United States is has been in

an annual gain for for decades now. Like it's a it's a real concern and to 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, we are growing more trees than we're taking, um every year. Yeah, I think the stat was since the nineteen Since nineteen we haven't made anything worse, right, And apparently, and since the fifties we've gotten way better. I think those four times the seventies were like kind of bad, but I

think that was like the the transition decade. Yeah, yeah, what this made me really appreciate we're early conservationist. Yeah, because postal of a war and during prefous civil war even people just sort of took what they wanted and did what they wanted with the land. There was 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 to say, you know what, I don't know if this is smart, what's

gonna happen in a hundred years. It's like, I know, you need your log cabin, Jebediah. What's mind boggling to me is that that debate still goes on. Yeah, that's true, you know, but 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 forest usually by what kind of trees are there. Um, for instance, a tropical rainforest you're gonna have broad leaf evergreens, a

boreal forest you're gonna have needle leaf evergreens. Then there's a temperate forest, which is like what we have here in the southeast. Yeah. And and the US are five major regions specific 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 bit of a scandal recently as far as Alaska and trees go. Are you gonna is that a tease? It's

a tease, Okay. 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 there. Actually, now I think about I think mahogany is a tropical

rainforest tree, is it? Yeah? I'm an idiot, all right, No, you know that's what I get for coming up with something on my own. Uh, soft woods you're talking pine, um, spruce, hemlock, douglas for redwoods. Those are soft woods. And we're just getting started. There's a lot of information coming your way. Should we take a break here? Should be? I don't know. It sounded like you were working out towards that. That was a break he set up, wouldn't it? All right,

let's take a break. We'll come back and we'll talk about why wood is good? All right? What 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, one 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. That that completely reche It's my ideas of hominids from one point five million years ago. What do you think about them before? Not that they could create fire. They're a bunch of cold dopes a little bit so 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, you went 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. Yeah, good movie. I kind of want to talk about my favorite part, but this is a family podcast, so I won't. Yeah. There's it's pretty brutal in a lot of ways, isn't it? All right? So why is wood good? Um? 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 clear cutting for us because carbon sequestration is great. It traps carbon, so the build up of CEO two is reduced. As a matter of fact, trees count for se of the organic carbon locked in the earth. Yeah, that's why that canopy is is important, right. Uh. They also provide habitats for all our animals and birds and insects and all the plants and good things that we love.

And uh the hydrologic cycle, souh. 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 uh filter out all that nasty stuff. 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, who you cannot only use it for fire, which a lot

of people still do around the world. Fire wood is still of um huge um 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 um do you remember when we were when we shot those Toyota, those Toyota videos that Carnegie melon, And one of the innovation things was like a filter, like an easy, cheap portable filter for cooking fires, indoor cooking fires, 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. And that still happens in uh, 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 non industrialized, I think that's even better. All right. So, uh here in the U. S. O. And and a lot of countries these days, only seven percent of timber is used

for um, I guess heating and cooking. Yeah, there's a big push against even that seven percent to Really it's just such a I agree with you that firefires, 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. The dude, I was like, you don't want to make money like I want to fire And you're like, I don't know, it's pretty expensive. I wouldn't. 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 in the u S. September. Yeah, and

most of that goes to new house construction. It turns out that makes sense pulp and paper or and then uh, composites like ap plywooden veneer the other seven. Right, Although I think we're missing one percentage point, aren't we? Or are we? 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. 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 sixes and all that stuff, that is lumber. Because it's sure if you point to a post around post and go give me three of the lumbers, we'll say, boy, where did you come from? Yeah, you're wrong on a

couple of points here. So that's called roundwood. Actually, yeah, that doesn't mean that that's not included in lumber. That's at nitpicky if you're outside the industry. I think say, I agree with you wholeheartedly, but if someone points that out, then I don't know, punch him in the face with the two by four. That's not that's not lumber, that's round with Remember hack saw Jim Duggan, didn't he attack people with the two by four and the w WF I didn't want a ton of wrestling. I'm pretty sure

he had like a two by four. That makes sense. It's violent. Uh, construction, it's about a fifty fifty split with lumber. Um 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.

I'm sure it's there's like a whole cartel controlling palelettes that people rebel against and um there's like palette thieves and counterfeitters and its 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 and um, you can make a lot of cool things out of pallets, and a lot of people are finding other uses. So they think you can just go behind the grocery store and take them. So now a lot of places have

big signs that are like, do not take these pallets. No, especially if they're blue, Like, that's stealing. If they're blue paletts, you 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. Uh. Furniture. If you make furniture, you're gonna like hardwood like oak and maple, because it's durable and it has that lovely grain that we all love so much. The softwood is

no slouch either. No, but palletts are used in hardwood too because it's sturdy, right, But yeah, softwood is a different deal. Now. They usually use softwood for construction lumber to because it contains fewer knots and things like that. And actually softwood is used chuck more form 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. It

could be 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're 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 is not straight. Now you want straight? M Like, I don't know how to make up for that. Like my buddy

Isaac in Kansas help me do my house. 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 carpentery smarts. Okay, so that's lumber, right, Yeah. Um. You can also make paper out of wood. This might be the fact of the podcast. If you're ready for this, paper is made out of wood. I thought you had something else you got me. Have we done one on

paper before? Because this seems awfully familiar. No, but I will say this touched off like five different topics that we should cover, paper being one of them all the origin ifier paper? What else? Um? Deforestation in earnest we're gonna touch on it. But and then there was a couple of more I think pornography just kidding. Um, So let's talk about the uh cellular structure of wood because

it's very important. Well, especially when you're talking about paper like that was not just a non sequitor, it actually makes sense exactly. So trees like everything else, are made of cells, correct, 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. But it takes a certain kind cell to make a tree. Uh yeah, the cells. If you think of the walls of the cells,

they make the tree strong. And there are a couple of chemicals that make up these walls, cellulose and lignant. And cellulose is flexible and bindy, and lignan says no, no, I'm your glue. Cellulos I'm gonna keep you, um more rigid because I don't want you to bend. So they work together to make whether cellulus likes it or not. Yeah, I always wondered about that. It has to go along with it. It's like I wanted to bend. Lignan get out of my face, right, is like no, no coloring

outside the lines. Uh. So if you separate those things, which we've been doing for a long time now, you can get those cellulose fibers and actually make something called pulp which will eventually make paper, right, and you can form it into a mate press and dry it and bleach it and turn it into paper. Like you said, you can also make other stuff too, um, technically fiber board, you know, the stuff that they used to put on the back of dressers and things these days. Uh crude. Yeah,

that's actually made from paper pulp. Um. If you're if you're at another hardware store and some guy that works there, lady says, what you want to use as m DF medium density fiber board, and that way they won't think your city folk. You can say yeah, MDF, sure totally, and then they'll know your city folk, like, give me three of those mds. Uh. And then you have hard board. And that's even stronger than fiber board. Uh. And it's just I think it's harder because it's pressed together with

so much pressure. It's more dense. Yeah. Fiber board is pulp and glue press the press together. Hard board 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 um particle board, right, Yes, these are composites. Plywood and particle boarder both composites, but they are different. The difference between

MDF and particle board is MDF is. Uh. Well, particle board is cheaper and it's made out of sawdust, whereas the MDF is is made of 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. They're

called veneers veneers. Plywood is great, but if you really want something that's just as tough, just as durable, but cheaper, you're gonna go for the oriented strand board OSB baby, which is basically like plywood made out of particle board. Yeah, and it's it's all but replaced plywood in construction these days, home construction because it's cheaper, Uh, 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 makes it stronger. So it's not just haphazardly tossed together. Impressed, I guess by God, specifically oriented invented nine. Uh yeah in California, I think. Actually, so your OSB, if you go into your hardware store and they'll say you either want M D F or os B, 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 turn 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 umber, timber. Sorry, man, I have a lot of trouble not confusing lumber with timber. The lumber is timber. Timber is not necessarily lumber. That's what I was taught as a young boy. So when you harvest timber, there's a couple of approaches, right and um, well, there's

several approaches, but they really fall under two umbrellas. One is that take everything to hell with ecology approach called clear cutting. 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's called a patch cut, 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 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. But with clear cutting, you just go in and you cut down everything. It's um it's pretty straightforward. Really, Uh, it takes slightly more thought to come up with a good what's called the

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 um net 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. 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 uh 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. Um, if you're in the timber timber industry, yeah, forestry industrystry industry, you can say, um, 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 the seven When regenerating tree species that need full sunlight to stimulate seeds sprouting and seedling growth. When dealing with spars, or expose 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. When regenerating stands of tree species that are dependent on wind blown seed root suckers or cones that need fire to drop seed. When face with salvaging over mature stands or stands killed by insects, disease, or fire when converting to another tree, speed seeds by planning or seating, and finally to provide habitat for wildlfe species that require 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 in streams and rivers. Aesthetics is the main reason that most people are opposed to it, or that many people are is that it just looks like a waste land. Right. Well, the problem is also with clear cutting, um it sets the stage for invasive species of say like fast growing weeds, to overcome seedlings, and it keeps the forest from regenerating. So

therefore clear cutting. Most people, I guess, except for the people who came up with those seven conditions, tend to believe that is it's an unsustainable method of harvesting timber, right. A more sustainable method is shelter wood cutting. That's the type of silver 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 time frame. That sounds like a good idea.

It is. Um. There's also seed tree cut seed tree harvesting, and then selection harvesting, which is where you basically go in and say this tree, that tree, that tree. Yeah, for that are more marketable. But opponents are proponents of clear cutting 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 you're artificially yeah, and you're you're disrupting the balance or the ecology of the forest by saying, just these great oaks leave all these other crumby 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? All right? Um? So when you do what when you do use any kind of silver cultural technique and you're not just clear cutting, you have to go through the the forest and figure out what trees you're gonna take a lot of times, and even with clear cutting, they will leave um trees that are say six inches in diameter or less in size they're too young. It's like how you um leave uh fawns when you're deer hunting, the exact same thing.

I love the name of that process when determining um and surveying the land to work it all out, It's called cruising. I'm gonna crow cruise the forest, right. Everybody you know drives around the forest with the pack of cigarettes rolled up in their shirt sleeves. Um. Next comes felling, and I got confused with tree felling on 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, because we would screw it up. I guarantee it. 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. Uh, 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, the most common

is to cut a wedge out of a tree. Measure about a third of the diameter of the measuring about a third of the diameter of the tree in the direction you want tree to fall. Then you that's where I would just stop. Yeah, my brains are shut down. Yeah uh then you uh. 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 the 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 one. The bottom cut is ninety degrees, the top cut is forty five degrees. I think, so, okay, the the wedge acts as a hinge,

so the tree falls in a safe, controlled manner. Then there's 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 from what I saw. And he said, ideally you want to leave the diameter of the tree intact between the back cutting the wedge, and that's called holding wood. And I think he said

holding 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 until 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 or drive a wedge into the back to bring the tree down. Well that that's pretty awesome to push a huge tree down with your hands and Yale timber, So thank you to Gabriel Gabriel Fribley,

Thanks Gabriel. And for firefighting forest fires, yeah, that's pretty neat. Or starting them, oh, come on, no, the forestry service does controlled 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 is mother firefighter? Do you remember that 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 a fire so that her son could make some money. Not really, but you know the mom that just wants to like take care of business. First one that's so chuck. Um. You've gone through, you've cut a bunch of trees. The first thing the loggers do is they hop all over the trees and go hp pep, pep pep, and they cut all the limbs off, right. It's called bucking, yep. And then once you've got the tree bucked, you cut it into huge logs 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 um 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. Now it's a log. Yes, huge logs, and so um, if you're gonna compact some areas soil, you might as well just compact the same area so rather than a bunch of areas of soil, so that the rest of the forts can stay healthy.

And when you get to the landing area, these logs are gonna be basically graded and sordid, and some of them are either going to be sent straight to the pulp mills to be created into paper right or fiber board or something like that, and then um, others may be sent in the higher grade stuff will probably be sent to um sawmills or concentration yards, which are basically the second stage of these landing areas, where um, these people say we're gonna put all these specific species of

trees over here because this one sawmill likes only oaks, so we're gonna 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, um 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. M this past year, I think it was commercial fishing. Airline pilot was number three. I find that very unnerving. Yeah, right, what I thought. It's like, I thought planes didn't crash much. What's up with that? I don't know, well, and my fear of

flying just came back. Farmers and ranchers or four in case you're wondering, mining machine operator, then roofers, sanitation collectors, which I thought was interesting. Are you sure it's that 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. It probably depends on if we're at war or you know. Okay, but airline pilot was still

in there. It was uh, And then truckers and industrial machinists, especially ice robe 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. Okay, you're shilling more for Discovery now than when they owned it, which is weird. Weird. What do you think podcaster? Is? Podcaster? Pretty unless apparently you're on a commercial airline, like a

one in ten million chance of death. Yes, if you're a podcaster death, you know, we can figure that out if we knew what math was. I don't. 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 to fire in here, right, then we could probably die from part Actually, in our case, it would be if Jerry finally snaps and just murders us both. I don't know.

I think we could defend Jerry all so chuck um. Once the stuff hits the sawmill, we'll go there. We already kind of hit the pulp mill, which stink. By the way, one of the foul smells on Earth are those like the can I just say egg fart? No way. You worse than that? Oh I thought it was like that real sulfury smell. Now that's well water down in Florida. Okay, this is like it's its own smell. Alright, you've surely smelled it before. You ever been to a chicken farm?

That's okay, you're right that that might be the worst smell of all. Didn't you use to work on chicken farms doing software or something not on farms? Okay, but 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 imagined 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. They were not receptive many times.

Talk about hunting and pecking. Yeah, there's a lot of hunting and pecking. So um at the at the sawmill, right when you're cutting up, well, when you're when you get a bunch of logs, you're like, these are some good logs, but I can't do much with this bark. It can use mulch that kind of thing, and actually bark. I didn't realize this bark represents basically one of two organs of the tree. There's actually three. Should we talk about the inside of a tree a little bit? Yeah,

I thought this was interesting. So the bark is the fol um, it's the sugar conducting cells flow the flow them and and basically it just provides energy. It transfers energy throughout the tree. 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, remember the power something. So that's the sound that that makes if you listen very carefully in the forest. True. Uh. There's another set of

internal piping uh, the tissue called the xyleum uh. 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 that's bark, the xyleum 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 um and um xyleum cells

and it produces a xylem cells inward. Right, So the stuff, the part of the tree that's closest to the bark is also the youngest heartwood. That's deep Yeah, that's the sap wood. Further inside, deeper into the tree, that's the older xyleum, and that's the heartwood. It's just the oldest part of the tree. Yes, and you when the log gets to the sawmill, they're going to basically separate those two things because there's different uses for sap wood and

for heartwood. But the first thing they're gonna do is get rid of the bark. Yeah. They put it, uh in a debarking drum and it's 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. They put

on a little music. It's pretty horrific. Foam machine. You're a tree and uh, 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 uh what else? Fuel fuel pretty much? Ye, okay, decorative mulchen fuel. But the Once you've got that naked log,

you're all set. So you want to cut the the sapwood from the heartwood because the heartwood 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 sometimes, right sometimes. And actually there's another article I read once about this um like, uh, this commercial diving company down in like central Florida, that their whole job was they would go down in the swamp and um like raise old cypress logs from the nineteenth century that have just been down there since then.

And um they sell them as like reclaimed original like heart of cypress for flooring people pay mind boggling amounts for because this this log was felled, you know, a hundreds 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

is heavy. Yeah, uh, And actually that perfect time to mention my buddy Jason from Damn castor Guitars. He built me a customed telecaster replica and they use uh old wood from a damn in Georgia that had been underwater for like a hundred years. And this thing is it's the heaviest guitar. It's beautiful, but it's tough on my back? Is it? 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 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, one through four. You should name one Joni and one Chocci at least alright, and one always keep them right next to each other, and one Fonzie and one Ralph Mouth. Now who was Fonzie's uh leather leather tuscad arrow pink. Well, they're sisters so was Pinky the younger sister. I think Leather was the one that looked like Joan Jett and Pinky is the one that looked like a bombshell model, like had the you know, the pink sweaters and the big poofy hair. So he

which one did he date? I think he dated Pinky Leather. She she didn't need guys she was. I think I remember who you're talking about. I don't remember Pinky Tuskedero. I definitely remember Leather Tuscadero. Man whoever wrote that show was a genius. Right, Well, what they're doing is they're satisfying everyone. They're like, you like the ladies rough and tumble, or you like them dressed up in pink with like poofy hair. Right? Do you like him with an Italian name? Right? Uh?

Where are we have we debarked or in like Milwaukee? Right? Yes, we have deepark to answer your question. Okay, so we debarked. You got a naked log. If it's gonna be paper, it's gonna 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 gonna mix those chips up with chemicals and stuff. They're going to uh put it in a digester. It's a big pressure cooker and that is what separates that cellulose from the lignant that

we talked about earlier. To get your pulp. Yeah, I just want to get that lignant 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. And then there you go. You've got what will be paper. Right. And if you're making lumber, you send your um, 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 and just cuts the log in half, or it cuts the edges off, and maybe like just cuts out the heart. It just sort of roughs it out right, and then you have um a couple of other types of sauce. There's a trimmer that squares the ends. Before that, you have an edger which creates the um, well the edges for your lumber. And then of course there's a whole other process involved in making roundwood a

k A posts which are not lumber. Evidently, Uh, your heartwood is gonna be um older obviously, because you know how you can tell a tree by the rings, those inner rings that we talked about the xyleum, right, and it's the cambium is creating more xylem cells. They're going on the outside of the heartwood. Tree is growing outward and they're there's just gonna be more knots in that

heartwood too, which is it 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 I do want to see knots, depend on what you're doing, like a good knot in the right place. For instance, my guitar has a beautiful not in the

center of the back that's just gorgeous. Now that I would call this one pinky tuscadero, I think, okay, so that's pinkcaera maybe leather to but I actually looked up not so I was like, wait, what is it not, 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 think

what it not was. Yeah, all right. And the last part of that process is you got to dry this stuff out. So you stack it up, sorted out, and you dry it in the kiln. Correct, Yeah, all right, it's like you made something out of clay. Should we take a break. 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, um were in awe of John your h John Muir was cool, weirdo um.

And these people they reacted to this rampant um deforestation that was going on, like there was a significant amount of logging that happened between the seventeenth century and the mid nineteenth century, up to thirty 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, And there was what was called they they were worried that there was going to be a quote national famine of wood and it wasn't just conservation at the time, Like plastics had not been developed. UM. Cheap easy metal alloys weren't developed until say the mid twentieth century, right, so we like

it was. Yeah, we really used wood a lot and for also for fuel, for king, for heating, all that stuff we needed would so it was gonna be a big deal if we ran out of wood. And as a result, a lot of people got behind these conservation efforts, UM, and especially the government here in the United States. UM. All government levels owned forest land, UM, but for the most part, the federal government owns the most. And they don't just protect it and say this is off limits.

They say, uh, you guys can come and pay for the right to cut down some trees from here, but you're you're going to follow our rules. Yeah, three three million acres of federally owned land in this country is public forest land. So either like national forest or I guess to be used by the logging industry if you meet the right conditions against Yeah, but I think even national forests fall under the that that umbrellas. Yeah, I

didn't mean that that they were not the same. What what does happen sometimes UM, is say animal will be placed. An animal that calls forest land or timberland it's 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. So the Mexican spotted owl was on its way to becoming extinct, and it made its home in the West, the western softwood temperate forests right and um.

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. Like no, they didn't know. It

was enormous. Um. And you know that a federal agency is doing its job when it's being sued by conservationists and logging companies right at the same time over the same thing, so or else they're not doing their job at all, depending on how you look at it. But eventually the Mexican spotted owl um was protected, its habitat was protected, and so the forestry, the timber industry shifted eastward, and so they they the 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 completely changed the complexion of the timber industry in the United States. But the timber industry is doing just fine, you know, And it's a real it's a real testimony that like they can adapt, 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. Gorgeis in that wingspan. It's like it's remark coble. When you see one fly, Yes, it's like, whoa that looks that's bigger than most birds. Have you ever had one like perch outside of your window while you're trying to sleep, 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 doesn't like wake me up or anything. Oh, we had a one that was keeping us awake. Really shoot it. No, No, that just went out and shying a flashlight in this general direction and it piped down. Never heard from it again. So they got the message, got you, and we were out less after that. He's like that guy with the flashlight. He's bad news getting out of here. Um. Alright, So the federal government owns a lot of land which is managed managed, managed by

um some different bodies. Um, but it's you know, they try and do their best job with things like the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, signed in two thousand three by G. W. 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 an explained territory forest. Yeah, there's a lot of like I suspect a lot of greenwashing going on, and um, so I started poking around and I've I've found that the

Sustainable Forestry Initiative is very frequently accused of greenwashing. Yeah. So you know how like um 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 silvicultural techniques that that

promotes sustainable forestry. The thing is is um. There's some other groups, say, like forest Ethics is a nonprofit kind of watchdog group that has come out and really aggressively said that the UM, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative is basically just a greenwashing front operation that's funded by paper companies. But it was international paper, international paper. UM. Uh yeah. There are a couple of others that's like think Weyerhauser was one maybe um that that fund this this approval

company or organizations. From what I can tell, it looks that way. Um and yeah, it's yeah, it's very disconcerning. Fortunately, there are some that do appear to be utterly legitimate, and the chief among them is the Forest Stewardship Council. 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 sf I. 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. That makes sense now, Yeah, rather than bearing the s f I seal of approval like um or buying paper that bears that seal approval, because it's not even necessarily the paper companies that are doing this because they're the ones funding the s f I. It's like Office Depot is no longer buying s f I sourced paper. I'm guessing they're probably going with the f

s C, the Forest Stewardship Council. So Hewlett Packard, a T and t um 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 yeah, this

is all clear. Now. Hey, don't thank me. Thank Forest Ethics, who apparently routinely gets season then desist letters from uh paper companies in the forests or the Sustainable Forestry Initiative UM and then chuck. The Force Service itself is often criticized for being in bed with UM, the timber industry. I'm sure they're the Alaska thing I was teasing earlier. What is it? There is something called the Big Thorn

Timber Sale. Six thousand acres acres of seven hundred year old forest in the Tongas in southern Alaska up for sale for clear cutting, clear cutting. And the problem is it is like, yes, it is, that's exactly right. UM. The problem is it is not just the people are worried that the forest won't recover, but that this forest is also used by other industries like fishing industry, UM, tourism industry. These people are like, um, we're using this acreage.

Can't just come come in and cut it down. Here's a couple of lawsuits to stop that sale. And I guess the federal judge in two thousand fifteen, I think March ruled no, go ahead, You're well within your rights. Maybe discuss thing, but go ahead and sell 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. Is if like, oh, I don't know. Warren Buffett bought it. He said, I'm gonna build a

small house in the middle of it. And that's a that gets should wear a cape. So, um, deforestation is a thing, and I agree with you. We should definitely do an episode just on that, right. But that's not the only threat to um the forests of the world. Now. It is a serious threat, but made threats are not the only threat. No, there's a few more natural threats. UM.

Insects of course. Uh. 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. Um. To the tune of it's nineteen thirty defoliated more than eighty million acres, so many East Coast forest eighty million acres just on the East coast, this little caterpillar. So that's an insect disease is a problem. UM. I know here in Georgia we've

sudden oak death is a big problem. Uh. And since it was originated in nineteen where I guess found in nineteen fifty five, say, a full forty years after that. I remember when this happened, it was probably Clinton's fault. It was Clinton's fault. Um. Since then, it has killed more than one million oak trees. Yeah, that's no gypsy moth, but that's a lot now. Um. And then lastly, invasive species are a real problem. Cutzo that was the other one I want to do. Yeah, oh you want to

do one on Cutzy ye so um. Cutzy was a great example of an invasive species. It's a non native, fast growing vine that and I think it's native. Japan has plenty of natural predators that like to eat it right. Um. Here in the United States, in the southeastern United States where it was given as a gift by Japanese businessmen in the thirties. Um, it doesn't have any natural predators

and it just grows like crazy. And the problem is that 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 Dicen sphere around a tree to to but it's it's a reverse Dicens sphere. It's accepting the sun from the outside rather than harvesting it from the inside. Tree death is what

it means. I know that you hate seeing that, like I just like shake my fist that it cuts you, Like, get off of that tree, just just stay on the ground. But do you ever take time to go out there and with your scissor shosht off that tree very frequently? Um 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 uh. An Asian business person ever gives you uh non native plant as

a gift, Smile, politely say thank you very much. Also don't make eye contact right and say thank you very much. But I cannot accept this gift. But would you like to go have a lovely sushi meal? Anything else? I got nothing else? So that is timber. If you want go type that word into the search part how stuff works dot com. And since I said search parts, time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this coolest tattoo I've scene in a while. Hey, guys, listen to Satanic Panic

today and I loved it. I loved that episode, by the way. Yeah, we've 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. Uh. She was born in n two this writer, and she says, I remember family members talking about parts of our home state of Kentucky that we're 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 wigia boards. And in fact, I don't think she's heard the episode on wigia boards that 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, um including I have quite a few

Wigia board items, including a tattoo on my chest. And she attached to photo. She's got like the upper lettering of the wigia board, like right across, like under her neckline, at the top of her chest. Yeah, it's and like when she wears like a dress with that exposed, it's just lovely looking like that pont and everything. 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? 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 an Exorcist and more recently wegia uh, the wigia board has been given a lot more power, and I feel that it really deserves I had my tattoo for over a year and have not noticed any paranormal activity surrounding me, and I have not been possessed, and I have not had a demon used 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 carry uh parentheses like the movie, a lot of horror movie references in that. Yeah, I thought it was very cool tattoo. Nice man um well carry right, that's right, Okay, Thanks a lot, Carrie for writing in and Uh. If you want to write to us, you can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know. You can

tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can send us an email to stuff podcast the House Stuff where dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you should know dot com for moralness and thousands of other topics. Visit how stuff Works dot com m