Shannon's Lumber Industry Update

Sticker stain is more about the drying technique than the material used for the stickers themselves. Certainly the stickers play a role but the key is getting the lumber below the saturation point quickly to stop oxidization and enzymatic reactions. The stain can ruin beautiful lumber and go so deep it can't be planed away. Additionally I dive into the Red Oak and White Oak market trends.

Limba is sold both as Black Limba and White Limba. It is the same species. Limba is actually more like White Limba and the Black streaks that make Black Limba are more of a form of spalting and staining. Its a species that you have probably seen already but didn't know it. From famous guitars by Gibson to modern interiors and furniture and now thermally modified siding in the form of Frake. The species is widely used and largely unknown.

So you want to use reclaimed wood. But where did it actually come from and what kind of nasty might it have been exposed to along the way? In this episode I talk about where reclaimed wood comes from and what potential hazards might show up and how to test for them. Basically a green light, yellow light, and red light ranking system to think about when considering reclaimed woods.

Accoya is a chemically modified wood to make it water and rot resistant and extremely stable. Not to be confused with chemical treatment like pressure treated pine, the chemical modification or acetylation process is non toxic and permanent. Accoya warrantees their products for above and in ground contact and has transformed the humble, planatation grown Radiata Pine into a wonder material.

The White Pine was the prominent tree across colonial America and it was thought to be an endless supply. Over 600 billion board feet of White Pine was logged after the Revolutionary War until the mid 1800s. When New England went dry, we turned west to the great lakes states and removed hundreds of billions more board feet. This removal of the "limitless" resource sparked the modern conservation movment and created the science that today we call silviculture. This is the story of the White Pine and why it should have a place on your workbench.