Tuesday, May 31, 2005Maple rustlers at work
In the Pacific Northwest, bigleaf maple is a highly valued wood for
musical instruments and furniture, especially if it is figured. Figured
wood includes bird's eye, ripple and other patterns which make the wood
exceptionally beautiful. More often than not, trees with figured wood
are gnarled, decayed or have other defects that lessen their value as
sawlogs, but dramatically raise their value in the specialty wood
market. Figure in trees is often the result of very subtle growth
abnormalities. The shifting of cambial cell divisions by small angles
between years of growth results in ripple patterns. Bird's eye is the
result of the growth and division of trace buds beneath the bark.
Burls, which usually contain highly figured wood, may result from virus
or fungal infections. The physiologic and genetic factors that cause figures wood are not known. A gallery of great photos of figured wood is at Jim Mattson's lab at Simon Fraser University.
Jim and his colleagues are investigating the genetic causes of wood
figure, in hopes of being able to propagate trees with a high
probability of producing figured wood.
The price paid for this high-value wood is high enough that timber rustlers are a major problem. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer tells us that maple theft is rampant in towns and rural areas around Seattle. Since woodoworkers will often pay hundreds of dollars for a single board of figured wood sufficient to make a guitar, thieves have substantial motivation for their deeds. A single pick-up truck load of good figured wood can fetch $5,000, not bad for a day's work. Or a night's work, since the trees are sometimes taken while a homeowner sleeps.
A new Washington state law will require that transport of figured or specialty wood be accompanied by a permit. The permit must be signed by the land owner where the wood was harvested. Until the new law takes effect in July, law enforcement authorities have to prove that the wood was stolen.
The real problem here is that wood is a commodity, whose origin is unknown to the end user. Once a log is sawn, the identity of the wood product is lost. All over the world, illegal logging ranging from huge forests in Borneo to individual trees in Washington brings a flood of illicitly obtained wood to the market. As long as there is no systematic effort to track the origin of the wood, many of the wood products we buy will come from illegal operations. Third-party certification programs, such as Smartwood, provide a trusted chain-of-custody system that allows the origin of wood to be tracked. Woodworkers and consumers have a moral obligation to avoid the use of illicit wood, but this message does not seem to have penetrated the wood market sufficiently. Considerably more consumer education is required before guitars like the Gibson Les Paul Smartwood guitar becomes the norm in the marketplace.
The price paid for this high-value wood is high enough that timber rustlers are a major problem. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer tells us that maple theft is rampant in towns and rural areas around Seattle. Since woodoworkers will often pay hundreds of dollars for a single board of figured wood sufficient to make a guitar, thieves have substantial motivation for their deeds. A single pick-up truck load of good figured wood can fetch $5,000, not bad for a day's work. Or a night's work, since the trees are sometimes taken while a homeowner sleeps.
A new Washington state law will require that transport of figured or specialty wood be accompanied by a permit. The permit must be signed by the land owner where the wood was harvested. Until the new law takes effect in July, law enforcement authorities have to prove that the wood was stolen.
The real problem here is that wood is a commodity, whose origin is unknown to the end user. Once a log is sawn, the identity of the wood product is lost. All over the world, illegal logging ranging from huge forests in Borneo to individual trees in Washington brings a flood of illicitly obtained wood to the market. As long as there is no systematic effort to track the origin of the wood, many of the wood products we buy will come from illegal operations. Third-party certification programs, such as Smartwood, provide a trusted chain-of-custody system that allows the origin of wood to be tracked. Woodworkers and consumers have a moral obligation to avoid the use of illicit wood, but this message does not seem to have penetrated the wood market sufficiently. Considerably more consumer education is required before guitars like the Gibson Les Paul Smartwood guitar becomes the norm in the marketplace.
