Thread: Victoria to end native logging

The switch to plantation will make all of the old growth timber much more valued for any visual use.

Is the bamboo solid 24x150 or is this a manufactured product? Bamboo is hollow inside I dont understand how 25x150 can be produced

Bamboo flooring, chopping boards, etc are made of relatively thin strips laminted together to form wider boards.

Originally Posted by qwertyu

Is the bamboo solid 24x150 or is this a manufactured product? Bamboo is hollow inside I dont understand how 25x150 can be produced

It's a manufactured product from raw bamboo that is pressed together with resin.

Do you know what sorts of glues are used? Do they contain nasty products like in MDF etc?

Originally Posted by qwertyu

Do you know what sorts of glues are used? Do they contain nasty products like in MDF etc?

Good question; I would like to know the answer too.

Over the years I have modified some bamboo composite boxes and trays - bought from Howards Storage - on the router table and saw table - and have been intrigued by the absence of any chemical smell. Actually machines quite well.

Originally Posted by qwertyu

Do you know what sorts of glues are used? Do they contain nasty products like in MDF etc?

Some googling indicates
The glue used in high-quality bamboo flooring is a phenolic resin which has low toxicity and meets world health requirements. In cheaper bamboo flooring, a phenol or urea-based adhesive is used as it is lower in cost and contains some amount of formaldehyde.

Hardwood and Pine lumber in the US has mostly moved the same way. That ship sailed over 100 years ago. It is all coming from plantation/planted trees.

Other sofftwoods are still mixed planted/old, but the old growth stuff is drying up quick.

My own opinion is that for structural/dimensional lumber, plantation/planted forest makes total sense. That saves "The Good Stuff" for high end/high value stuff..

Consider thar Rosewood has been plantation grown in India for well over 200 years, and that stuff can be spectacular.

Originally Posted by truckjohn

. ... Consider thar Rosewood has been plantation grown in India for well over 200 years, and that stuff can be spectacular.

Yes.

Ditto - teak.

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

Yes.

Ditto - teak.

Ditto oak in France for 400 years. They harvested some of it for Notre Dame

Originally Posted by truckjohn

Hardwood and Pine lumber in the US has mostly moved the same way. That ship sailed over 100 years ago. It is all coming from plantation/planted trees.

Other sofftwoods are still mixed planted/old, but the old growth stuff is drying up quick.

My own opinion is that for structural/dimensional lumber, plantation/planted forest makes total sense. That saves "The Good Stuff" for high end/high value stuff..

Consider thar Rosewood has been plantation grown in India for well over 200 years, and that stuff can be spectacular.

30 years ago, from what I knew, the US was growing more Red Oak than they could use. Sadly, Canada hasn't figured out much. They're still harvesting old growth and not doing a good job on replanting. I worked on a fellows house 20 years ago. He owned the largest privately owned forestry company in Canada. All the old growth fir he harvested went to Japan. I think most of it was cut into 12"x12" and the Japanese used to sink it in lakes until they needed it.

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

Next time you are out of town, go for a walk in the nearest pine plantation. Apart from the rustle of the wind you will hear and see little - virtually no insects or other invertebrates, no animals, few birds, no butterflies, very little undergrowth. None of the local fauna can adapt to that environment. It is a green desert.

That's consistent with other changes in the balance of nature more generally, many of which are observable by ordinary people.

When I was a kid in the 1950s and as a young adult into the 1970s any longish drive from Melbourne into the country resulted in insects splattered across the front of the car. That hasn't been an issue for a few decades. Must have caused a major drop in the sale of bug and tar remover.

Same with cabbage white butterflies; common brown butterfly; harlequin bugs; and earwigs, which were in every garden when I was a kid. They are not at all common now, along with cicadas and frogs and lots of other bugs and critters that were still common even in urban Melbourne 40 to 50 years ago.

In the total scheme of things, maybe it doesn't matter greatly if a pine plantation is a green desert and that's confined to the plantation as long as it's producing timber, but from the selfish viewpoint of humans it certainly matters when the desertification is more general with other living things that are crucial to the maintenance of our lives, such as the decline in insects necessary for the pollination of various food sources we rely upon.

What is discouraging is that governments and government agencies seem often to be well behind the game in responding to these issues, rather like Vic Forests and other government agencies in dealing competently and sensibly with forests.

What is encouraging is that many farmers are independently recognising and responding to the challenges in the balance of nature, and they're well ahead of governments.

One can only hope that some farmers and other large landholders will see a profitable opportunity to grow native hardwoods on their own land. Which will be fine until they come up against planning controls that prohibit cutting down any trees of more than a minimal and not saleable girth on their own land and have the local Council prosecuting them for filling a gap in the market caused by the incompetence of higher levels of government.

Originally Posted by 419

That's consistent with other changes in the balance of nature more generally, many of which are observable by ordinary people.

When I was a kid in the 1950s and as a young adult into the 1970s any longish drive from Melbourne into the country resulted in insects splattered across the front of the car. That hasn't been an issue for a few decades. Must have caused a major drop in the sale of bug and tar remover.

Same with cabbage white butterflies; common brown butterfly; harlequin bugs; and earwigs, which were in every garden when I was a kid. They are not at all common now, along with cicadas and frogs and lots of other bugs and critters that were still common even in urban Melbourne 40 to 50 years ago.

In the total scheme of things, maybe it doesn't matter greatly if a pine plantation is a green desert and that's confined to the plantation as long as it's producing timber, but from the selfish viewpoint of humans it certainly matters when the desertification is more general with other living things that are crucial to the maintenance of our lives, such as the decline in insects necessary for the pollination of various food sources we rely upon.

What is discouraging is that governments and government agencies seem often to be well behind the game in responding to these issues, rather like Vic Forests and other government agencies in dealing competently and sensibly with forests.

What is encouraging is that many farmers are independently recognising and responding to the challenges in the balance of nature, and they're well ahead of governments.

One can only hope that some farmers and other large landholders will see a profitable opportunity to grow native hardwoods on their own land. Which will be fine until they come up against planning controls that prohibit cutting down any trees of more than a minimal and not saleable girth on their own land and have the local Council prosecuting them for filling a gap in the market caused by the incompetence of higher levels of government.

A mate of mine about 20 years age planted a 5 acre paddock wit native trees. He had to pay the council $500 dollars then to be allowed to plant his own land with trees. He has planted over a thousand trees on his fence lines and wind breaks.

20+ years ago, I had a semi rural property in a buffer area between suburbia and a national park. You had to be careful to prevent any new native trees from growing because if they grew, then you wouldn't be allowed to clear them. Everyone would let their livestock browse through their stands of trees to make sure no saplings would survive. The council would use satellite pictures to track your trees. You couldn't grow new ones and clear others. So people didn't grow new ones. You could plant pines or non natives and then cut those down. So my property had some rows of pines when I bought it.
You'd have to be nuts to plant rows of natives. You'd effectively lose any say in your own property and reduce its resale value.

If you wanted traps for pests or any thing like that then you had to pay full retail prices. Easier to let your dog roam around your property.

There were plenty of policies like that.

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