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In the age of sail, navies did maintain forests for building future ships. Often trees were specifically grown into shapes needed for strongly curved parts of the hull, because bending of large timbers was difficult to impossible, and parts built up out of multiple timbers were always weaker than single timbers in the right shape. If you wanted to severely limit an enemy’s future capability to project power, all you had to do was to set fire to their naval lumber stockpiles and uproot their naval forests.
Fuck. It takes that long? Damn.
That’s what human civilization with 100% renewable resources looks like.
Just imagine if they had had the foresight to do it in 1607 lol
Oak trees grow a long time but they’re very strong and get quite big
And then Google cut them all down
That was in Finland.
The joke is, you spend hundreds of years building a forest and here comes Google.
Ah ok, got it.
That is not late. Oaks are slow growing trees, a timeline of 200 years is expected for them.
Think about how long it took to grow when carving wood. Then you fuck it up and ruin it. A tree older than the oldest relative you can remember died for this and you ruined it.
At some point I do want to buy some proper wood rather than using broken fence panels, but then it costs money.
This is why I only use fast-growing, purpose-harvested pine.
This, and the “costs money” part. You either have an entire lumber mill in your garage, or you buy the expensive, pre-milled stuff. There’s no way wood furniture is cheap. It’s like if they can’t sell us the finished furniture, they’re going to get their profit from the materials to build it.
Fuck Capitalism, and the billionaires who leech from us.
A connoisseur of crap wood I see. Those “fast growing, purpose grown” trees make the worst lumber and boards. Just look at the loose wide grain of the wood.
But, if you like that stuff, I got 80 acres of red pine I’ll sell you.
I’d absolutely take a large amount of crap wood for purposes where quality doesn’t matter, but your usage of acres suggests to me that there’s a bit of water between us
Before capitalism, even the meanest peasant had furniture built and carved of the finest hardwoods. 🙄
And even now any peasant can do it, it just takes a ridiculous amount of time to do it all by hand just as it did then.
Technically you can mill and shape lumber by hand with handsaws and like a jack plane. It does take awhile, though
There’s a carpenter I see on YT pretty often who does shorts on woodworking tips. I’m always amazed, “That’s how you do that without beating yourself up!”
Given I want to make small things I have wondered about using firewood. Probably a lot of work to saw it down though and often has cracks from drying quickly.
There are some fallen trees in the park. Could I just take them?
No you probably can’t take them. They belong to whoever “owns” the park.
There are some fallen trees in the park. Could I just take them?
That’s highly variable depending on country and local law. Usually no that wouldn’t be legal.
In places like National parks or conservation areas I’d encourage you to leave them alone. A dead tree is part of the natural cycle.
A city park where they will mulch it up tomorrow definitely ecologically fine to take. Check local legality
Highly depends on the place. There are countries where remnants of medieval customs around commons have become modern law, allowing people (usually residents of the community to which the forest belongs) to gather fallen branches as firewood in public forests. In some places this even goes so far that communities have to make a certain percentage of the wood harvested from their public forests available to their residents for free.
You also need to let the wood cure.
Wait till you spend a hundred bucks on a small piece of rosewood to build a guitar bridge and cock it up.
This seems oddly specific. Someone you know?
or so I’m told …
i think this is also why conifers are so popular for timber these days, grows much faster. AFAIK something like pine takes maybe 40 years until it can be harvested.
40 year mature conifers also have completely different properties and is subpar for the things oak is great for. A conifer won’t work as a mast for example. Fast grown confiers will rot like crazy.
They work well enough for situations where they are protected from the elements, which is why they are used in construction. But an old house made from slow growth, espicially a lot of hardwoods, won’t instantly rot when water gets in.
A conifer won’t work as a mast for example.
Acorn to Arabella made their mast from spruce: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGac8Xa-i8A (skip to 1:53)
I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but I think an oak mast is more likely to break in a storm because it’s stiffer.
I should have said for warships to be extra clear as if you make something small enough even balsa wood works. Also, oak holds up better in a wet and salty environment.
They used oak because it was proven to work across centuries. They took down sails during storms to avoid damage to the mast, which would happen no matter what wood is used.
Spruce is a great material for masts because it’s light and strong. Fir might be appropriate, too. Avoid pine, it’s knotty and rots faster.
Douglas fir are historically popular for masts as well because they grow so straight and tall.
Check out “daisugi,” a Japanese pollarding technique that produces usable timber even faster (basically having one rootstock grow multiple main trunks). IIRC in the 1700’s they were harvesting pine every 25 years
However, it ain’t no replacement for oak. Does smell a lot better, though
It’s late if you want to build a warship out of them. Environmentally though, it’s fantastic.
“I know not which weapons will be used to fight WWIII, but it’ll be sticks and stones in WWIV” to misquote whoever that was. Maybe it’s still a little early. heh
The original quote was Einstein, btw
“The original quote was Einstein, btw”
— Abraham Lincoln, probably
And thank you. I’d forgotten the source, only remembered it through Cards Against Humanity. hehe
I think i only know it because it was in one of the civilization games lmao
Smart Danes. You never know when your country will need timber in large quantity. Back then, France king used up all our oaks to fail in naval wars. In 2027, our oak population still haven’t recovered.
Meanwhile Finnish forest are gueting destroyed for data center… *sight*
In NW Florida we used up our Live Oaks, or Naval Live Oaks as we usually say. There was a pulley system where you could feel the weight between a cubic foot of live oak and red oak. It was a stunning difference.
Which is heavier? Idk think I have ever see a read oak. It doesn grow naturally were I am. But it looks like a pretty tree.
The Live Oak is the clear density winner. It was kinda freaky being able to directly compare the two.
In fairness, Finland has more trees now than 100 years ago.
Part of it though is from not letting companies pull bullshit like Google did. Whether this fuckass government will do shit about it though…
TIL.
France also has more forest that ever in recorded history but most of them are exploited, the number of tree or the surface of the forest isn’t a metric for richness weither in biodiversity or in material quality. Let hope our ruler realised that and give the forest the very-long term strategy and forward planning it needs to thrive.
how tf you posting this from 2027?
Time zones + daylight savings.
Also not being American helps, we’re frozen in 1942.
uh, american here, I think we’re trying to return to 1942, and on the wrong side at that. lol
1842
¿Por qué no los dos? heh
Yes, I did take a estimation that centuries of growth that hadn’t happened yet won’t happened for the two months and three days we have left for 2027. It is an estimation rather than a fact but I’m confident in it and will stick by it.
So… no time machine, then?
I’ve got a sofa where, if you sits long enough, you move to the futur. You have to be patient though if you want a big time lapse.
Well, I would have asked to borrow it, but I have no interest in traveling FORWARD in time. I’m doing that anyway.
But are you doing that seated? This machine bring an added confort.
No regrettably it’s the uncomfortable way. More like being bent over the couch.
I believe France did the something similar. There was talk of using them to repair Notre Dame since there’s no more need for wooden ships anymore.
Of course, these plantations aren’t big enough to make up for the oaks that have been cut down over the past few centuries across all of Europe.
I won’t say. I’m not educated on the sudject. I just know that Louis the XIV infamously used up all the oak for it military ambition, that and all the country money and that today there is no oak older that 200 years old because of him specifically. That’s the extend of my knowledge on the subject.
We do have les landes with a gazillion of imported super tall pine trees though! Planted by Napoleon if I got that correctly. Super nice in the summer.
Yes and a good use or such pine trees that are unfortunatly use in other places to replace forest with trees fields like it was the same things.
Fortunatly that has happened near my home yet but what I hear about l’Ouest is assez inquiétant.
Everyone laughed until the Danish armada blackened the horizon.
As it burned
They’ve done better for us by just being trees than being turned into war ships, anyway.
Fun fact, these trees are still being turned into historic viking warships at Roskilde. If you are ever in the area pay them a visit, amazing museum 10/10!
i love reading these things about history. Too often we say glib things about a country or culture without knowing the history. We should all read history!
I usually do not look at the history, but rather at the documentation.
fun history fact, denmark has like the record in number of wars fought with other countries.
No that is not true. I think you are confusing it with the fact that Denmark and Sweden has the record for two countries which has been in war with each other the most.
I guarantee you that the UK for example was in more wars in the 19th century alone than Denmark has participated in for centuries.
aaaah yeah that’s probably it
Foster, don’t let USA hear this.
Do they have oil? No? Eh, fuck 'em
/s
Eh. We should pay a bit more attention to Historians, I suppose?
The thing about historic records is they were written by biased sources who can’t be vetted now. And, we’re constantly destroying records. Plus, the Historians themselves are biased.
All we can do now is pick an interpretation and either agree or disagree. The majority rules, but is not always right, as we know. You can learn history in classes, and the professor will profess. You can read the documents provided--those that are left, and translated to your language, and therein lies more issues--and come to your own conclusions, influenced by what your professor professed, of course. And, then you’ve Learned History, but what do you really know? And, so it goes with education. We can only learn from the past in the present. It’s not useless, of course, but it shouldn’t be made out to be more than it is. It’s not gospel, either.
Hell, we can’t even agree about things that happened in living memory, take the George Floyd situation.
Go ahead and downvote me.
Actually, if you study history, one of the most important elements is studying historiography. So no, you don’t just get given facts by some professor and have to judge for yourself.
“Figuring things out is hard, so you shouldn’t try”
In 1573 the Spanish navy besieged the lakes and rivers around Haarlem, eventually routing the Dutch independence movement in a prolonged sea battle.
Today it’s the location of Schilpol airport.
It’s umm, Schiphol and not Schilpol
It’s “um” not “umm”. /s
There are multiple few hundred acre sites scattered across new England and the Midwest that are specifically for maintenance of the Navy. They are mostly just used for The USS Constitution at this point, but she does get the best wood from those forests.
if you’ve never been on her, the Constitution is probably the ship i’ve been on that made it easiest to fall in love with sailing.
And the cannon shots every morning.
Is quick video by Half as Interesting about this topic :D
You’ve just got to plant them earlier, like 1000 years earlier
They should use some of it to rebuild a historical war ship for experimental research and coolness like they did for the French Hermione that carried General La Fayette to the USA in 1780 to join the American Revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_frigate_Hermione_(2014)
Capitalism is slowly strangling any hope of this sort of thing. We need to rein in capitalism hard before we’ll get cool stuff like this again. If a case can’t be made for how a new expensive thing will make the rich richer, then it doesn’t happen.
Ehhh there’s plenty of cool stuff being built and done without real economic incentive. Just look at the number of old steam locomotives that are being restored, or the number of new-build steam locomotives. These are multimillion dollar projects with no conceivable return on investment, yet people keep doing them because these are cool things that can be done!
L’Hermione was rebuilt with public money and sailed all over the world. But after many years it needs costly reparations, it has financial troubles and it’s looking for private sponsors to help.
I wonder how long it will take to rebuild. This was like 19 years ago.
Me when playing Timberborn:
Someone has to clean up the silly hooman’s mess!
Use up all your precious resources in the dumbest way possible. I’m looking at y’all rare earth users!
Now live in pain.
I heard rare earth materials aren’t actually rare or uncommon, they’re just extremely difficult to process.
They are “rare” in the sense that they are never found in high concentrations, and yeah you have to process a lot of shit you dont want out in order to get them isolated. Other than that they are literally everywhere, just in tiny bits
rare earth because there’s only one earth duhhhh
;-)
Because they behave similarly electrically, chemically and dynamically by mass. So all the various ways of processing materials then always have a difficult path to separating the elements that are close to one another. Plus they’re actually rare so only found in high enough concentration to make any economical sense getting from specific areas until there’s a big enough market.
