Traditional Uses
Of Wood
We aim to collect information
here about all the myriad of different ways the wood of different trees was
used, so it will be a handy source of reference when it is completed. Here are
the woods we have so far:
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Illustration from
"Frontier Living", (1961) written and illustrated by Edwin
Tunis. © Edwin Tunis
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The
wood of the Alder is light, quite brittle when young and easily worked. It is
often worked while still green and will turn well on a lathe. The cream coloured
newly cut wood turns a pink orange whilst working on it. This ‘bleeding’;
causes the more mature wood to be beautifully tinted and veined. It was
therefore much sought after by furniture makers. In the Highlands of Scotland,
it was used a lot for making chairs and thus came to be known as ‘Scottisch
mahogany. Cabinet makers were especially fond of the roots and knots of Alder
wood. Mrs. Grieves reports that it was also used for cart and spinning wheels,
bowls, spoons, wooden heels, herring-barrel staves, etc. On the European
continent it was used for cigar boxes, because of it reddish cedar like
appearance. In Lancashire it was used to make clogs for the textile mill towns
and it was similarly used in South Scotland. The bodgers, working in the
coppices and woods, cut the green Alder into roughly the right size for clogs.
They then left it to season and send the material on to the workshop to finish
the clogs.
In
ancient Ireland, Alder was used to make pails and other dairy equipment.
Green
Alder branches can make good whistles and panpipes, an important attribute for a
tree to possess in the days before mass entertainment.
Alder poles were a favourite timber for underground
foundations in damp or wet conditions. It
was used as piles under houses, bridges, boat jetties, canal lock gates, pumps
and troughs. The ancient Roman writer, Virgil, claims that the first boats were
made of Alder wood. The timber can resist decay in a wet environment almost
indefinitely. Venice floats partly on the strength of Alder trees. However, it
is not very good for fencing in dry land, since the wood seems to need the water
to balance its fire power in order to remain solid. Alder fencing posts can rot
within the year at the part between the earth and the air.
Before
synthetic dyes started to come into general use, the Alder gave us some of the
very finest dyes for wool and linen. The wonderful Mrs. Grieves, author of “A
modern Herbal” informs us in great detail: “Both bark and young shoots dye
yellow and with a little copper a yellowish -grey, useful in shadows of flesh in
tapestry. The shoots cut in March will dye cinnamon, and if dried and powdered a
tawny shade. The fresh wood yields a pinkish-fawn dye and the catkins green. The
bark is used as a foundation for blacks, with the addition of copperas. Alone it
dyes woolens a reddish colour (Aldine Red -(which was a favourite colour of
our Celtic ancestors). An ounce (of bark), dried and powdered, boiled in 3/4
pint of water with an equal amount of logwood, with solution of copper, tin and
bismuth, 6 grains of each, 2 drops of iron vitriol, will dye a deep boue de
Paris.”
Nowadays
the wood is often used as woodpulp. In the USA the timber is of considerable
economic importance, as it is the third most important hardwood export in the
U.S. after red and white oak. In Canadian forestry high quality red alder logs
are said to be approximately equal in value to that of a douglas fir log.
Red alder wood is used in the manufacture of fine furniture, specialized
veneers, plywood, paper and pallets.
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The wood of
Alder Buckthorn was almost always used in the form of young twigs and branches
and the most profitable way of doing this is by coppicing. Due to the great
demand for gunpowder (in the Middle Ages for canon balls and later also for shot
guns, the wood was almost entirely used to make charcoal. The bark was taken off
the branches and used for other purposes such as dyeing and for medicinal
purposes. The charcoal from the peeled sticks makes a very light inflammable
charcoal, which burns evenly and slowly and ignites readily. The younger the
wood of which the charcoal is made, the finer the charcoal powder will be. The
make gunpowder, the finely ground charcoal was mixed with saltpetre, sulphur and
nitrates.
Alder Buckthorn charcoal was in great demand right up to the end of the second
world war. Its steady-burning properties were also exploited in the
manufacturing of fuses for explosives.
The twigs, being hard and straight, can also be prepared as a fine drawing
charcoal for artists. Yet another use of the charcoal is for medicinal purposes,
because of its ability to absorb gases (flatulence), chemicals (poisoning with
aspirin, paracetemol, barbiturates and morphine) and smells (deodorizing foul
ulcers).
The long straight twigs of the tree sharpens well and have traditionally been
used to make arrows, as well as butchers spikes and skewers. These spikes and
skewers were in some parts also known as 'dogs', hence the tree was sometimes
known as 'Black Dogwood'.
The coppiced branches have also been used for walking sticks as well as pea and
bean sticks. Along with willow and split alder, they have also found use for
cane seating and basket work.
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The
wood is very hard, heavy and close grained. This makes it excellent in use for
anything that has to endure heavy wear and tear, such as tools and handles.
Apple is therefore one of the favourite woods to make clubs and wooden wedges.
Such wedges were once an important woodcraft tool, because they were used in
splitting trunks and poles. A knotty apple log could also make a splendid mallet
head, especially when there was a side-branch next to it, which could be cut off
to the desired length as a handle. Apple wood was also used to make golf clubs,
but nowadays they are usually made from different types of metals.
Apple is a beautiful timber for decorative furniture, but because the trunks are
often short and the branches small and twisted, it is only usually made into
small pieces of furniture and kitchen tools. To make a small amount of wood go
further, it has sometimes been used for inlay work. Some lovely pieces of
sculpture and woodcarvings have been made from apple-wood.
I have also heard that wooden screws were sometimes made from apple wood.
Seasoned Apple makes a wonderfully luxurious firewood with a lovely scent. If
you’re lucky enough to have any you may like to save it for a special
occasion. The smoke from an apple wood fire gives a most excellent flavour to
smoked foods.
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Well-grown Ash is one of the most
versatile woods of all our European trees. Only Oak is stronger, though in
different way, and Yew more elastic. Ash wood can be used for more purposes than
any other timber and it has the advantage of quick growth.
The combination of strength and flexibility enable it to carry more weight than
any other wood. This makes it an excellent choice for joists or beams,
especially valued before the extensive use of steel..
Its ability to take heavy knocks and bear tension makes it the wood of choice
for tool handles (spades, forks, hammers, axes, chisels, etc.) and sports
equipment (rackets, hockey sticks, ski’s, gymnasium equipment, ladders, etc.)
Ash was used to make the toughest horse shafts and was in great demand for the
rims of cart wheels, carriage building, railway wagons, early aeroplanes. It was
a favourite wood for the frames of boats, canoes and coracles. The Tudor-like
frame of that most British of motorcars, the Morris minor Traveler Estate, was
made of it. Many things now made from metals were made from Ash: such as harrows
and rakes.
Traveling, skilled craftsmen, known as bodgers, worked in the woods and turned
green unseasoned Ash into legs for tables and chairs, bowls and other household
utensils. Their wood-turning lath was powered by the combined action of a
springy Ash pole and a treadle.
Sometimes the choice of Ash wood was enhanced by strong faith in the evil
repelling and protective qualities of the tree. A shepherds crook and the
handles of witches brooms were traditionally made of Ash. It was one of the
woods for Druids wands and its roots, which resemble human shapes, like the
notorious mandrake plant, were used in magic as ‘fith-faths’ or healing
images.
Ash was used for bows, arrows, spears, hop poles and too many other items to
mention.
However, even Ash has its
limitations. It is not much good for fencing poles, because it deteriorates fast
in continuous contact with soil. Maybe this is one of the endless examples of
Divine synchronicity between spirit and matter: the resilient, flowing strength
of Ash withers when it is pinned down and fenced in. However it makes a fast
growing hedge and it is probably one of the most common hedge plants in Wales
and Northern England. Ash also coppices and pollards well.
Ash is a magnificent firewood, of which many old rhymes bear testimony:
“Ash, mature or green,
makes a fire for a
Queen”.
It is one of the few woods to give a lovely fire when unseasoned and after
seasoning it burns hot and steady and is virtually smokeless.
“Ash logs, smooth and grey,
burn them green or old.
Buy up all that comes
your way,
worth their weight in
gold”.
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Opinions about the value of Beech
timber can vary enormously. It has been said that the Beech was valued more for
its pig-fattening mast (the seeds) than the wood. Others will tell you that it
is a versatile useful wood. These contradictions will be more easily understood
when we examine the characteristics of the wood.
The wood is short-grained, yet dense and hard. The short grain makes it easy to
work and excellent for use on a wood-turning lath. However, it also makes
the wood brittle and lacking in toughness. Its density and hardness make
up for this to some extent, so its usefulness depends a lot on what we want to
make. It may not be the right sort of wood to create a tool handle from, because
this has to be tough and elastic and is ideally made from a long grained wood
such as Ash, but Beech would be excellent for a mallet head of a chopping block.
Beech wood is not very durable outdoors, with the exception of objects which are
kept constantly wet, such as water wheels. Constant soaking appears to increase
durability miraculously. This explains why it was often used for ship building
when tougher woods, such as Oak, were not available.
Even for indoor use, the wood will not last as long as other hardwoods, but
sealing it with oils, wax polishes and other preparations helps. James Brown ("The
Forester", Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh & London, 1871) says:
"The wood of the beech, when in a young state, is proverbially of short
duration."
It is obviously not a wood that should be used where structural strength is
required, such as beams and joists, nor should it be used for purposes which
require long use and low maintenance, such as roofing timbers, but it would be
eminently suitable as a lovely flooring material.
Beech has some advantages too. Apart from its easy workability, it is easily
bent after treatment with steam and its denseness and hardness make it an
excellent wood for everyday wear and tear. Thus its traditional uses include
bent-wood furniture (such as Windsor chairs), other items of cheap furniture,
toys, shoe-heels, rolling pins, platters, ice-cream and take-away chip spoons,
clothes pegs and so on. It was also used for panels of carriages, carpenters
planes, stonemasons mallets, granary shovels and many articles in turnery. On
the continent it was used for parquet-flooring and in France it was made into
the famous 'sabots', wooden shoes that kept out the damp better than any other
wood. Beechwood is relatively free of taste and smells and so it was often used
for kitchen utensils, bowls and spoons. In Denmark it was used for making
butter-casks.
Once the problem of protective impregnation was solved, large amounts of Beech
were used on the European continent as railway sleepers.
The colour of the wood is cream to medium-brown. It often has streaks of
different colour, but these do not affect strength. The rays are more
distinctive than the growth rings, which causes the wood to be flecked, rather
than to have spectacular wood-grain patterns. The moisture content of green
Beech is 90% (Ash 50% and Elm 140%).
As with all woods, these statements are to some extent generalisations. Beech
which is grown in ideal circumstances will have a more even, straighter grain
than that of an exposed, windswept tree on a poor rocky soil, which may be
harder to work.
Beech is an excellent firewood after a year's seasoning. It burns with a bright
flame and has superior heating power. Consequently it was used extensively as a
domestic fuel.
The wood has also been used for making charcoal, especially for
colour-manufacturers, but also for the gun powder industry.
In Britain, large plantations of Beech were grown in the Chilterns during the
last two centuries to service the chair-making industry. Because of its
versatility, being strong, yet easily worked, Beech has replaced Oak as the
major hardwood timber crop in Britain.
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In spite of being a deciduous tree
the wood of Birch is soft, much like that of evergreens. Especially before the
event of steel tools, this was in many ways a great advantage,
making it easy to shape into a great variety of useful objects for use in daily
human life: cups and bowls, broom-sticks, furniture, barrel staves,
bobbins, clogs, toys and so on. Because of its Mother spirit, Birch was
also the wood of choice to make cradles from. Traditionally besom-heads are made
of Birch branches, being thin, tough and pliable. And so Birch has for
thousands of years swept away the dirt, dust and dross in households in the
Northern hemisphere.
The wood burns very easily with a
cheerful bright flame. The other side of this is, of course, that it does not
last a long time, so you have to add logs frequently, but where Birch grows
naturally, it is usually abundant. So supplies were plentiful.
Many nomadic folk, such as the
Saani people (formerly known as Laplanders, a name they dislike), used birch
branches as a mattress. The Saani survive cold nights, in a tipi-type tent
within the arctic circle, by stacking the lacy branches about a foot high around
a pile of stones in the centre of the tipi. A fire is lit on top of these
hearthstones, reindeer skins are rolled out as a bed on the branches. By the
time the people fall asleep, the stones have been heated up by the fire and
radiate warm air amongst the branches all night long , thus softening the cold,
rising from the frozen ground.
Many 20th century people learned
that the Romans invented under-floor heating and that electric blankets were the
latest novelty in nightly comfort.......
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Blackthorn wood is hard and tough,
like that of most species in the Rose family. It has light yellow sapwood and a
brown heartwood. The size of the timber is of course rather small and so it can
only be used to make small artifacts. The wood takes very well to polishing.
It has mainly been used for walking sticks, tent pegs and teeth for hay-rakes.
The sharp thorns were used for centuries as awls, which are pointed tools to
mark surfaces or make small holes, for example in leather work.
Blackthorn was the traditional wood for the Wands of community healers, such a
tribal medicine people, wise women, etc. It was also used to make the
traditional Irish shillelagh or cudgel, used in fighting sports.
Whole bushes or crowns of the trees have been used in the past to rake or harrow
small fields after plowing. The most thickly set and sturdy specimens were
chosen for this purpose.
All parts of the tree are good firewood and make a hot, blazing fire.
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Boxwood is extremely valuable. It
is the hardest wood of any European tree. As far as I know only Ebony is harder.
Box is twice as hard as Oak and said to be as durable as brass. Moreover, it has
a very fine, close uniform grain (as fine as Ebony) and does not warp. Its
density makes it also a very heavy wood and when it is green: it will sink in
water.
The colour of the wood is pale yellow and may be familiar to those of us who
have seen old-fashioned wooden rulers or the carpenters measuring rules, which
were used before the introduction of plastic rulers and metal tape measures.
Box can be cut into the finest patterns without breaking.
Obviously, a wood with all these qualities was very much sought after and must
have been invaluable before metals were easily available. It is not surprising
therefore that it has many traditional uses.
First of all it was used for measuring devices, mathematical; and navigational
instrument and good quality musical instruments, such as flutes and clarinets.
Box has been used as an inlay for wood carving, cabinet making and as a
substitute for ivory. It was of course the wood of choice to make printing
blocks and engraving plates. It allowed the wood-engraver very fine detail in
making pictures. It was used for pestle and mortars, pill rounders, small pulley
blocks, moving parts in the textile industry and handles for tools which get a
lot of abuse such as chisels, wedges and so on.
A few examples of the long list of other uses are: small carvings, chess pieces,
toilet and snuff boxes, forks and spoons, children's tops, rosaries and other
small objects.
The root is even harder and contains more beautiful patterns, which made it a
popular choice for dagger handles, fancy boxes and small turned articles.
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 The
wood of the Plane is quite tough, reasonably hard, difficult to split and fine
grained. It is often known as 'lace-wood' because of the delicate tracery of the
grain patterns. It is however not durable for outside projects and not esteemed
for carpentry. Another drawback is that the sapwood is liable to be attacked by
the common furniture beetle.
It is useful for indoor joinery; light internal construction work; furniture;
cabinet making; veneering and inlay work, because of its attractive appearance
and because it can be brought to a fine finish, as well as taking a high polish.
It has also been used as wood-pulp for various products such as paper.
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Rowan
has a strong, flexible, yellow-grey wood, which was once widely used for making
tool handles, small carved objects, plough-pins, pegs for tethering animals,
cartwheels,, poles, hoops for barrels, churn staves, tackle for watermills,
rough basketwork, etc. If large enough it provided excellent planks and
beams. It was used by the hill people to make long bows, instead of the yew and
ash so often used by lowland people for this purpose. Due to its habit of
quick growth, the tree makes excellent coppices. Rowan was also used for great
variety of magical purposes: wands, magical spears, talisman inscribed with
runes and other meaningful patterns, etc. All parts of the tree were used for
tanning hides and for dyeing cloth black.
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The
trunks of fully grown trees are extremely valuable and much sought after for
their beautiful decorative golden-brown heartwood. The sapwood is a few shades
paler. The wood is used to make veneers and fine quality furniture. Wood turners
and carvers value it as well for its lively patterns. If the wood is worked
whilst still 'green', it may take on an orange colour.
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 Yew
wood is extremely hard and durable and "resists the action of water upon
it".
In East-Anglia, East Yorkshire and Ireland ancient Yew wood has been dug up from
bogs, fens and peat-land and this beautiful wood, after careful drying, is
perfectly useable for making furniture and carved objects. Before the days when
iron was easily available, it must have been extremely precious. Farmers used to
say that "A Yew tree post will outlast a post of iron". It is also the
most 'elastic' of woods and can withstand great tension. It was used for
tool handles and for making weapons: spears (a yew spear, found near Clacton is
the world's oldest wooden artifact at around 150.000 years old), dagger handles
and, famously, for making long bows. For proper tensile strength the bows needs
to be made from staves cut from a straight trunk, rather than a branch.
The suitability of yew wood as supreme material for the making of long bows was
the cause of a great decline of the amount of yews growing in Europe in the late
Middle ages. In England, Edward III made it compulsory for every able-bodied man
to practice archery. This degree led to a huge demand for the wood, which could
not be satisfied by home grown Yew. Parliament degreed in 1492 that every ship
landing in an English harbour had to bring at least 4 yew bows per ton of
freight to remedy this situation. Hundreds of thousands of bows and more were
imported from the European Continent, which also had to satisfy its own
considerable demand for long bows. This early form of arms industry led to a
huge decline of Yew stands in Spain, the Alps, Austria and Bavaria. It is likely
that any remaining trees, both at home and abroad, and their descendants would
not have the top quality timber needed to make the best bows, as all the gnarly
and other unsuitable 'timber trees', which were left over, have since parented
the trees we know today.
The Vikings used yew wood for nails in the building of famous long boats. Wine
barrels were sometimes made from Yew, which gave rise to a saying in Ireland
that "Yew was the coffin of the Vine."
The beautiful patterns in the wood with its darker rusty red-brown heartwood,
golden/orange sapwood and irregular ring structures have made it much
sought after for making furniture, ornaments, sculptures and keep-sakes of
all kinds. The 17th century arborist John Evelyn recommended Yew wood for:
"Parquete-floors, cogs of mills, axles and wheels, the bodies of lutes,
bowls, pins for pulleys and for drinking tankards." The wood has also been
used as a high class veneer.
Yew makes an excellent quality firewood, when it is available, although it seems
rather a waste of this sacred wood unless you make the fire for a very special
purpose.
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