green wood part I

I thought I would take an aside from my research on wood ontology to do a little research on sustainable wood practices.

The FSC, or Forest Stewardship Council was mentioned today, and among a few other organizations, it seems to be the predominant society dealing with ethical and sustainable forestry practices, whose sole purpose is the coordination and development of forest management standards throughout the different biogeographic regions of the US.

Link to the 10 FSC Principles.

While the organization appears to be reasonable successful in providing a base for the development of sustainable forestry practices, it is designed for mass buyers of wood, like our friend Jeff. The industry really needs a stricter brand to advertise the fair practices endorsed by the FSC, like the ADA brand you find on toothpaste (I once bought a toothpaste without ADA brand, guess what the main ingredient was…Sugar), and their needs to be a stricter enforcement of these practices…

wood

I was going back through the posts, and I began thinking that maybe it is important to step back a moment and examine woodworking in a deeper more methodical approach. I would like to question the merits of woodworking especially concerning the ontology of wood and its complex historical relationship to art in world where it is becoming apparent that resources are no longer endless. So, I guess I will start out with wood itself. Is this okay Shannon?

The use of wood is historically the starting point of civilizations worldwide, and is preceded by the age of metals given that wood was needed as a source of fire in order to melt wood down. Initially wood was used for simple machines and rudimentary tools as bows and lances. The most ancient article ever found is a 250,000 year old spear made by the Homo erectus species. The more recent civilizations such as the Egyptians and Sumerians were the first to use wood in more ornate purposes. Objects of furniture remain intact, excavated from secret tombs. Starting at this time, wood began to be used for elements of roofs of buildings and boats hulls.

Wood was very scarce in the period of the ancient Egyptian civilization but was necessary for maintaining Egyptian power, mainly to maintain Egypt’s fleet for trading and protection. The Egyptians were the first civilization to build large ship hulls enabling long distance travel across seas. Wood was often used a cheaper alternative to stone in tombs as well as furniture, chariots and other objects. Carpenters and cabinetmakers had a sophisticated array of tools and techniques that are not that dissimilar to modern practices….

Woodworking Demo: Milling (Pt 3)

Jointing
Jointing is done to smooth out and straighten a single surface of a board. Once you have a single straight surface you can straighten out the other sides to create a near perfect board.


Make sure before you run your wood through the jointer to find the direction of the grain and cut along that direction to prevent tearing up your wood.


When pushing your wood through the jointer provide lateral force to keep the wood moving along the jointer blades evenly.


The jointer will only ever take a small portion of the surface off so you'll have to run your piece through several times to provide a clean smooth surface


Once done jointing the first surface of your board to the point where its smooth, joint a edge using the smoothed as a guide surface to provide you with a perfect 90° edge.

Not really furniture...

So this isn't quite furniture, but it seems that Bay Area based artist Reuben Margolin's kinetic sculptures use a lot of woodwork and similar processes. I just thought this was a perfect example of the power of woodworking as a prototyping language... see the entire make tv episode here : Make.tv:105.