Wood and the forest
The forest is the first material store, the first fuel supply and the first thing a group kills itself cutting down. Managed, it is also the only one of the three that grows back.
Home: Woodworking, Level 1 · Foothold, level 1 of 1 in its track. Serves 5 steps across 3 subjects.
Wood is a family of materials, not one. Ash bends and absorbs shock, which is why every good tool handle for centuries was ash. Oak heartwood lasts decades in the ground. Willow grows two metres a year and weaves. Elm will not split, so it made wheel hubs. Yew makes bows and poisons livestock. Choosing the wrong species is the commonest reason early woodwork fails, and it fails later, when a handle snaps or a post rots out.
Wood also moves. Green timber is roughly half water by weight, and as it dries it shrinks about twice as much around the growth rings as across them, and almost not at all along the grain. That one ratio explains why boards cup, why logs split from the ends, and why a joint made green falls apart dry.
And trees kill the people felling them. The mechanisms are few and well understood — a trunk that splits upward and kicks back, a dead branch falling from the canopy, a tree caught in another — and every one of them is prevented by geometry decided before the first cut. That geometry is drawn below.
Species by use
Heartwood — the darker core of a mature tree — is what carries the durability. Sapwood of almost every species rots quickly in contact with soil, whatever the tree.
| Wood | Property that matters | Use it for | Do not use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oak | Strong; heartwood durable for decades outdoors; tannin-rich | Frames, posts, beams, barrels, charcoal | Direct contact with iron nails in the wet — the tannin corrodes iron and stains black |
| Ash | Tough and elastic; absorbs shock; bends when steamed | Tool handles, ladders, cart shafts, bows in a pinch; burns well even green | Anything outdoors — it rots quickly |
| Hazel | Coppices vigorously; long straight flexible rods | Wattle, hurdles, thatching spars, bean poles, basketry | Structural timber — it never grows thick |
| Willow | Fastest-growing; rods root when pushed into wet ground | Baskets, fish traps, living fences, cricket bats, charcoal for gunpowder | Fuel if anything else exists — burns fast and cool |
| Sweet chestnut | Heartwood durable; coppices; little sapwood | Fence posts, pales, shingles | Where rigid dimension matters — it can shake (split) along rings |
| Elm | Interlocked grain resists splitting; lasts permanently if kept wet | Wheel hubs, chopping blocks, water pipes, keels | Wet-and-dry cycling — it rots fast |
| Beech | Hard, fine, even grain; turns and bends well | Indoor furniture, tool bodies, bowls, spoons | Outdoors — perishable |
| Pine, spruce, fir, larch | Straight, light, easy to work; larch heartwood fairly durable | Building frames, boards, poles | Carving fine detail; ground contact except larch heartwood |
| Black locust (Robinia) | The most durable temperate wood | Posts that last 50 years in the ground | — |
| Yew | Heartwood and sapwood together form a natural composite spring | Bows | Anywhere livestock can reach clippings — foliage and seeds are highly toxic to animals and people |
Felling without being killed
Before touching the tree:
- Read the lean. Hold an axe handle loosely by its end so it hangs as a plumb line, and sight past it from two directions at right angles. A tree falls the way it leans unless forced.
- Look up. Dead branches — widowmakers — come down from the vibration of cutting. A tree with dead limbs or a dead top is a job for rope and experience.
- Choose the direction of fall close to the natural lean, into a clear gap, never into another tree.
- Clear two escape routes at 45° back from the direction of fall, on either side — not directly back, where a trunk can kick off the stump.
- Clear everyone else to at least two tree lengths in every direction.
The cuts:
- The notch — on the side it will fall toward. Cut to a depth of one-quarter to one-third of the diameter. An open-face notch of 70° or more keeps the hinge holding almost until the tree reaches the ground, which steers it all the way down.
- The back cut — from the opposite side, level with the apex of the notch.
- Stop short, leaving the hinge. A strip of uncut wood about 10% of the diameter thick, running across most of the trunk's width. The hinge is what controls the fall. Cut through it and the tree falls wherever it wants.
- Wedges go into the back cut as soon as there is room, so the saw is not pinched and the tree can be tipped past vertical if needed.
- When it moves, leave along the escape route. Do not watch it from the stump.
Seasoning, and why wood moves
Freshly felled wood is 45–60% water by weight. Air-dried it settles at 12–20%, depending on the climate. Between those, it shrinks — and it shrinks unevenly:
| Direction | Shrinkage, green to dry | |---|---| | Along the grain | ~0.1–0.2% — effectively none | | Across the rings (radial) | ~4–5% | | Around the rings (tangential) | ~8–10% — twice the radial |
What that ratio causes:
- Logs split from the ends in radial cracks, because the outside shrinks around a core that has not. Seal the end grain of logs you want to keep whole — wax, paint, clay, anything — within hours of cutting.
- Flat-sawn boards cup away from the heart as the outer face shrinks more.
- Quarter-sawn and split boards stay flat, because their faces run across the rings.
- A joint made from green wood loosens as it dries — or, used deliberately, a dry peg in a green socket tightens forever.
Air-drying timber: stack boards flat on level bearers, with stickers — thin dry battens — between every layer so air passes, under a roof but open at the sides. A rough rule is one year per 25 mm of thickness.
Firewood: split it — split wood dries several times faster than rounds — stack it off the ground, roof it, and leave the sides open. Softwoods season in 6–12 months, dense hardwoods 12–24. Seasoned wood is lighter, has radial cracks across its ends, sounds a hollow clack when two pieces are struck, and hisses no water when burned. See the fire guide.
Splitting follows the grain, and that makes it stronger than sawing
Before sawmills, most timber was split, not sawn — and split wood is stronger, because the break follows the fibres instead of cutting across them. A split tool handle has no short grain to snap along.
- Start at the end, on a radial line through the pith, with an axe or a wedge.
- Drive wedges in sequence along the opening split, leapfrogging them, rather than hammering one wedge deeper.
- A froe — a blade with a handle at right angles — levered in a crotch or a brake steers a split: pressing down on the thicker side makes the split run toward the thinner side. That is how shingles, laths and chair parts are rived to even thickness.
- Split green. Green wood splits cleanly and easily; dry wood tears.
- Straight-grained, knot-free sections only. Every knot deflects the split.
Green woodworking — shaping freshly split wood on a shaving horse with a drawknife and spokeshave, and turning it on a pole lathe — is the whole early furniture, tool and utensil industry, and needs no sawmill and no kiln.
Coppice: the forest that is harvested and never cut down
Most broadleaf trees regrow from the stump when cut near the ground — sending up many straight poles instead of one trunk. Cut those poles on a rotation and the same stool produces for centuries; some coppice stools in England are over a thousand years old.
How:
- Cut in winter, while the tree is dormant — in the northern temperate zone, roughly November to February. Summer cutting weakens the stool.
- Cut low and sloping, 5–15 cm above ground, angled so rain runs off rather than pooling in the stump.
- Divide the wood into coupes — one plot cut each year — so that some wood is always ready.
- Protect the regrowth from deer and livestock for the first 2–3 years, with brash piled round the stools or a fence. Browsing animals kill a new coppice faster than anything else.
Pollarding is the same thing done 2–3 m up the trunk, above browsing height, where animals graze underneath.
| Species | Rotation | Product |
|---|---|---|
| Willow | 1–3 years | Withies for baskets and traps; fast fuel |
| Hazel | 7–10 years | Rods for hurdles, wattle, spars and bean poles |
| Sweet chestnut | 12–20 years | Fence posts, pales, poles |
| Ash | 15–25 years | Tool handles, turnery, firewood |
| Oak | 20–30 years | Charcoal, bark for tanning, poles |
| Alder, birch, hornbeam | 15–25 years | Charcoal, turnery, firewood |
Build the gear
Where to go next
This page covers what you are most likely to meet. It is not a field guide, and on identification that difference can kill you. These are the works that go further — chosen because they can be held offline.
Still to come
Illustrations carry a technique further than prose, but some things only move well. Recorded here rather than left implicit.
- Photographs of a correctly cut stump showing notch, hinge and back cut — no open-licence image found; the search returned bird beaks
- A drawing of the bore cut and back strap used on heavily leaning trees, which the barber-chair callout describes
- Tree identification in winter, by bark, twig and bud — when coppicing actually happens
- Sawpits and pit-sawing: converting a log to boards before there is a mill
- Axe and saw sharpening, and hafting an axe head so it does not fly off