Thread: Old Growth Timber

For one thing use lumber comes from old building which people pay for. You can buy an old building and take it down. Most times they demand that you remove everything. There are people who do this for a living.
Now for your forest. In the 18th c your country loged the day lights out of the forest with out replanting. Old grwth is valued and every one wants to save it. The strip loging caused silt to fill the rivers and close off the mouths at the sea. This has cause a lot of problems. Get a metal detector if you are going to use old wood. It will be cheaper than the price of a good Forest saw blade.

Originally Posted by sailingamerican

In the 18th c your cuntry

Ahem, just a ah little more care and respect here please sailing.

Originally Posted by LineLefty

But The flooring market.....................

If that was all that was using up the good timber then all would be fine. However, most of our beautiful timber is turned into wood chips for export to Japan so that they can turn it into chipboard and sell it back to us at a massively inflated price. This is why we are suffering the rape and clear felling of massive tracts of land in Tasmania and other beautiful timber covered areas. Loggers don't see trees, they see a whole valley of dollar signs. :mad:

I was under the impression that MDF was made from pine and resin?

Or does it come from the MDF tree perhaps.

Originally Posted by Bob Willson

Ahem, just a ah little more care and respect here please sailing.


If that was all that was using up the good timber then all would be fine. However, most of our beautiful timber is turned into wood chips for export to Japan so that they can turn it into chipboard and sell it back to us at a massively inflated price. This is why we are suffering the rape and clear felling of massive tracts of land in Tasmania and other beautiful timber covered areas. Loggers don't see trees, they see a whole valley of dollar signs. :mad:

Couldn't agree more. On a bit of a positive note, I noticed that Mitsubishi (one of the leading buyers of Oz woodchips) made an announcement a couple of weeks ago that it was going to stop buying chips logged from old growth forests.
Hope it's true and not just PR.

Originally Posted by sailingamerican

In the 18th c your country loged the day lights out of the forest with out replanting.

This country was only colonised twelve years before the END of the 18th century. They must have brought the BIG chainsaws out with the convicts.

My apologies to LineLefty, I don't know if you got the answer you were after?This thread has turned into another forum of sorts, and I'll just add my 2 cents worth.
Having come from Forestry and later, Parks in QLD, I can almost say that clear fall logging has never happened in state controlled land (QLD) for the pulp industry. It has happened (clear felling) to plant other timbers such as the Pinus species, Hoop Pine and Bunya Pine (Native). QLD used 'selective logging" for the sawmill industry and even then the QLD public were 'up in arms' with us. I did visit Tassie many years ago to view their "cable logging" techniques for future use in QLD (steep country). I can say that even for me it was a bit of a shock to see so much country at any one time decimated. The reasoning behind this form of logging was explained (including the dollars) by Tassie Forestry and at the time it made sense,(emulating the natural cycle of severe fires).
I don't wish to make light of this in any way, but I suppose for most of us we eat meat of some sorts, but we don't really need to go the abattoirs to see how it's 'made'.
To LineLefty, a lot of these companies like the one you mentioned may well have a lot of 'ears' in the building/realestate industries. It is their job, and how they make their money, from knowing whats getting sold, demolished and built.
Well thats my 2 cents worth and thoughts on the matter.

Thanks Michael, serious responses can be somewhat of a rarity.

So you are saying that companies such as these are using recycled timber?

Adam, more than likely the companies are working in the the realesate agents, builders etc to obtain the timber for recycling.

I doubt very much if these companies who sell the timber would make known publicly how they go about getting the timber in the first place. They would be doing themselves out of money.

regards

LineLefty,
I don't believe many would be using recylcled timber to make fittings and the like as there would generally be concern with the quality of supply and the efforts that would be required to meet the quality expectations of the manufacturers and unltimately the consumers.
With flooring there are a few good companies about that specialise in recyled timber and floorboards as nail holes can be patched and as most would admit a few annomalies adds character. I'd run my boundary fence naked if any of the major mobs went out of their way to source the majority of their materials from recylced timber - it's too cheap to either log it locally or import. If you try to trace timber you will find most big companies hide their timbers origin in a long list of suppliers and agents thus it's difficult to substantiate if the 'sustainable managed forests' claims they make are true - some would be honest - some wouldn't.
I agree that it is a concern, but surely our government is looking after the future of our resources

I believe few, if any major corporations would be using recycled timber. One of my clients is a major national demolition company and they have real trouble selling recycled timber other than to small concerns.

The main reason cited is that for structural purposes now, no one wants to grade the material, as each stick must be done individually..... this leaves the material suitable for only non-structural purposes, and some flooring.

On the issue of "how they get their timber" I recall being offered as much raw lumber as I could handle, here in Victoria so long as it wasn’t the specified target species that was being logged.

Here's what I was told happens: a logging contract is issued for say, Iron Bark...... the loggers can technically only take that, but to do so they have to go through other species to get to the coop..... that's "ok" I was told....so long as they don’t remove the logs and process them as a commercial venture - so they get permission to "remove" the "wrong" logs from where they are logging so their machinery and trucks have access ..... "remove to where?" you might ask ..... where do you reckon? And who is there to check what goes on? We are talking pretty remote areas and broad timeframes...

Messed up system, huh? But I guess how else are they going to get to the approved coops for logging? Helicopters have been used I am told, but would be a very different way of doing things!

Makes me kinda glad I only make 18+19th century European style furniture from recycled materials

Cheers