The United States of Wood

Just saw this on LinkedIn. It would be a fun GF project if you had access to all the wood species (or were part of a nation-spanning community of makers). :wink:

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Great idea for a Proofgrade kit, @dan!

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that is a great idea!

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Wood exchange could be really interesting. Any issue with transfer of wood across states? I know kiln dried is different but home milled wood?

Flowering Dogwood for MO is ok but if we have to share, I’d nominate walnut as a sub. And hickory needs in this mix.

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Now all you need to do is to get a state legislature to change their state tree to Hickory. :wink:

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Yeah, you’re right. I’d be more interested in a map of states with specific woods endemic to them and ensuring that there 50 unique. Like Osage Orange that is big in MO, KS, and OK. I know states trees and state flowers are a big deal, but I feel so sorry for the also rans. I mean, so many pine species. And Iowa? Oak. Which kind? Oh, I don’t know. The oak kind.

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Hmm, if you weren’t doing official state trees, but just local-to-the area, Colorado beetle-kill blue lodgepole pine would be interesting. There is a lot of it around these days.

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I was just twitting @marmak3261 – beetle-kill wood would be really interesting. I’ve seen some great pieces done with it. I don’t have a way to cut/plane it down to GF-suitable pieces, so finding a source will be step 1.

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Love the map, and though pecan is the start tree of Texas, if you wanted to be realistic you would have to go with mesquite. Beautiful wood, hard to work with and hard to find sticks of much size.

Also, isn’t the state tree of Nebraska the telephone pole?

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Yes, I wonder what the origins of these state trees are? Who pushed the bills under what circumstances? Sure, pecans are big in Texas, but Oklahoma is a big producer, as is MO and so are some other states who pronounce it to rhyme with “He can”.

Mesquite though, that would be good for Texas with all the barbeque huppla.

Oh, and that would be so delicious to sell the US map and do NE with telephone pole.

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The main reason we cook with it is it’s everywhere and it’s not really good for anything else :smile:

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As a woodworker I REALLY want to work with all of these woods. I can’t get access to most of these at any of my local mills.

I’d definitely be willing to consider doing some exchanges where people can send me wood and I’ll mill it up for them and send it back, as long as I can also keep some for myself. I buy most of my exotics rough cut and do all the planing, sanding, and cutting of the boards myself.

I will add the caveat that the thicknesses would be approximately the thickness desired, I don’t have the set up to get exact thicknesses.

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The only time I ever camped in Texas, we made a fire with the pile of dry, dead wood that had been left there by someone else. It was mesquite. That was a smelly fire.

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I love working with mesquite. And hackberry; another oft-maligned Texas wood.

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wow - that is beautiful! :heart_eyes:

Gorgeous work! :grinning:

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I don’t have any specifics, but, there are many major restrictions in place across the US because of the spread of insects and diseases. This mainly concerns unprocessed logs or firewood or turning sized chunks.

Beautiful. I love mesquite, though finding good size pieces without too many stress fractures can be challenging. To me it’s as beautiful as any exotic. The only problem is it’s trying to take over everything :smile: and it takes a long time to grow a medium sized tree.

Lol, it probably would have made me hungry :yum:

I drove across the Texas panhandle. Until then I thought a line of telephone (telegraph??) poles all about ten feet high, in a perfect line to the horizon, was just a fictitious thing from roadrunner cartoons.

The drive across Nebraska, the long way, was 400 miles of corn followed by 400 miles of hay. You think they could have gone cornfield, hay field, cornfield, hay field, but no, they didn’t.

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