OT: Hardwood vs Softwood

Doug fir is commonly used in buildings -> softwood. (ditto pine, etc.)

Pine is a soft wood.

However furniture makers are using it now so they can filch way too much for cheap shit furniture out of our "modern" pants down past the asscrack generation of idiots.

Jeez, your binary group cross post crap is lame.

Thanks for the confirmation. ...Jim Thompson

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Always, unless its medieval, then it would be oak=hardwood.

NT

Commonly, yes. I'd guess it's a near-certainty for houses built in the last 50 years or more.

Older houses in some sections of the U.S. might have studs or beams harvested from e.g. east-coast hardwood forests. An old enough building might even have structural members made from chestnut... "reclaimed" chestnut planks and beams from old country barns can be highly sought after by furniture builders and those who want "classic" hardwood flooring.

Somebody found a stand of American chestnut trees in some isolated mountain valley, so they're liable to be spreading over village smithies again soon. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Unless it is something unusual it is. Mostly pine of some kind. I have seen some of the old pine 2x4s that for whatever reason seemed to be very hard to drive a nail through. Maybe hartwood ?

Hard wood is too expensive to use for framing material where it is just going to get covered up.

Well, as I understand it, the problem isn't lack of original tree stock to work with. Old American chestnut stumps have been "re-sprouting" for years, but the shoots don't survive for very long... the blight fungus gets to them and they die. The surviving American chestnut trees are the ones which have been geographically isolated from the blight.

There *is* reason to hope, though. I saw an article a couple of months ago about a particularly elegant little bit of genetic engineering that's being tested out now. Somebody has figured out how to transplant one specific gene from wheat plants into chestnut. This gene enables wheat (and, now, chestnut) to manufacture an enzyme which breaks down oxalic acid. It turns out that oxalic acid is what the chestnut blight fungus generates and excretes, in order to attack the wood of its host trees and enable the fungus to spread into the wood. A chestnut tree with this gene and enzyme can detoxify the acid... in effect, turning the blight fungus from a deadly disease into a harmless "bark rider".

Since the gene is one that has been present in a human food crop that has been widely consumed for thousands of years, there's good evidence that it's safe for humans. Testing is underway to make sure that the presence of the genetically-modified chestnut does not have adverse effects on the forest ecosystems in which it's raised... the article I read said that all looks good.

So, within a few years, the developers hope to have American chestnuts (not American x Chinese chestnut cross-bred hybrids) available for sale in a blight-resistant cultivar. Replanting of east-coast forests, and restoration of American's rich heritage of chestnuts and chestnut wood, seems possible.

It's a complicated process

A lot of these people are dreaming: the difference between tree farm timber and natural forest stand timber is the difference between night and day- d ifficult to even identify it as the same species. Harvesting natural forest stands needs to be outlawed. If the industry can't invest the time and mon ey in tree farm production, then they can do without. Tree farm lumber is w ay superior and yield per acre is way more, maybe 10x more.

There's a bunch of other endangered species:

eastern hemlock is scheduled to be obliterated by an Asian woolly adelgid ash is being decimated by emerald ash borer dogwood killed off by virus american elm by blight western pines by overpopulation of beetles due to global warming black walnut by thousand canker disease- probably global warming a bunch of oak species another damn Asian worm is eating all the North American viburnums- most pe ople know this as an ornamental in the landscape, but it is an ecologically important understory tree in the wild the list goes on forever

Balsa is a hardwood. The meaning of soft-/hard- wood is not what you think.

Total Bullshit

You're behind the times.

First it was "global cooling"

Then global warming

Then climate change

Then climate disruption

And this week it's "climate violence."

I guess next it will be "criminal climate assault" which I assume will be a felony.

He's right, and you're Always Wrong.

Yep. Hardwood and softwood are defined, not by their hardness, but by how they distribute water within their cells....

...Jim Thompson

The stud (me) in my house is hardwood, for sure.

"He said wood. huh huh huh huh."---Butthead

I prefer soft melons to go with my hard wood.

There is such a thing as engineered lumber, you'll find that used in header s a lot, also where really long spans in solid lumber are not practical suc h as girders, joists, the I-beam (wood) stuff. The conventional studs are S PF= Spruce Pine Fir, depends on market and proximity to the supply.

es

ber and natural forest stand timber is the difference between night and day

- difficult to even identify it as the same species. Harvesting natural for est stands needs to be outlawed. If the industry can't invest the time and money in tree farm production, then they can do without. Tree farm lumber i s way superior and yield per acre is way more, maybe 10x more.

people know this as an ornamental in the landscape, but it is an ecologica lly important understory tree in the wild

"Global cooling" aka "the next ice age has already started" never had any t raction, mainly because there wasn't any particularly persuasive evidence.

Anthropogenic global warming took about two decades to get any traction - t here wasn't enough of it until about 1990 to make for persuasive evidence, and that was when the ice-core data started coming in to start showing us h ow the inter-glacial to ice age transitions (and back) had actually happene d.

"Climate change" recognised that idiots like you don't understand what "glo bal warming" means, and kept on getting excited about localised cold snaps.

Ditto.

Google Vanatu and the consequences of Cyclone Pam - a category five cyclone

The sooner the better. We are getting more "extreme weather events" driven by higher surface temperatures and more water vapour in the atmosphere. Mor e CO2 in the atmosphere may make planets grow marginally faster, but if the y keep on getting up-rooted by high winds the advantage doesn't last.

Wood gets harder as it gets older.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

By definition of "softwood" is coniferous, so yes it is softwood (assuming the house was built in the last hundred years). It might be Southern Yellow Pine, which is rather hard, though. ...much harder than balsa, which is a hardwood. ;-)