Читать книгу Woodworker's Handbook - Roger Horwood - Страница 7

Trees are alive! As unnecessary as it may seem to mention this, it is good to remember that wood is a product of nature and is therefore finite. Although many valiant efforts are being made to replant trees and preserve our forests, it would appear that we are fighting a losing battle as the availability of wood declines in the face of growing worldwide demand. It is not too difficult to replace the faster-growing trees that are ready for harvesting twenty to twenty-five years after planting, but what do you do about the beautiful hardwoods, many of which may take as long as three hundred years to mature? Whenever you handle a beautiful piece of timber you should think of its history, appreciate the natural beauty of its finite resource, and do your utmost not to waste what nature has taken so long to produce.

Let’s take a closer look at the resource with which we will be working. A visit to a well-stocked lumberyard (timberyard) is an adventure! First, the visitor will be impressed by the number of different types of wood available, and the variety of lengths and sizes in which it is presented. And then there is the olfactory experience— the variety of aromas exuded from woods is a pleasure in and of itself, and, in the writer’s opinion, is better than a visit to any perfumery!

The different woods listed in this book fall into two major categories: natural wood (direct from the tree) and man-made “wood” (manufactured from by-products of wood from the tree).