On May 9, 1:28�pm, "Michael Faurot"
wrote:
This question pertains to what's available from North American wood
dealers. *This may well be a naive question, but why is it that
there doesn't seem to be much available in terms of other North
American trees such as Elm, Sycamore, Willow, Birch (not counting
plywood), Beech, etc.?

Or to phrase the question a different way, why is Cherry, Walnut, Oak,
Poplar, Maple, etc. what's predominately available?

--

If you want to reply via email, change the obvious words to numbers and
remove ".invalid".

If the assholes at AOL will let this go through, it may help explain:

A quick note on the woods: cherry, walnut, maple and the oaks are
reasonablys table woods; sycamore HAS to be quartersawn to be stable
(but it is gorgeous then); willow is too hard to locate in stands that
can be commercially cut, so is a local option wood; American beech
moves a lot, unlike European red beech, so you might not be too happy
with a table top of beech; tulip poplar is too soft for many uses, but
makes great dough bowls; Dutch elm disease wiped out many elms, but
most elm is hard to locate; birch is easy to find, and not as easy to
find in lumber stores, though it is available commercially and used in
cabinetry and furniture; Osage orange is a small tree and hard to
find, but the wood is very unusual in appearance (and working);
hickory and pecan are readily available if you like them, but aren't
much fun to work; the list goes on and on.

Once the eastern beech forests were cut over, we ended up with mixed
stands, with our current standard woods dominating even then. Today,
we're probably in 30th growth in planted areas, and there is a
tendency to not mix species in managed forests, which I see as less
desirable on a long term basis than mixing the tree species.

So, generally, the ones you list as not found can be found, but you
have to look hard, and, in some cases, be where they are locally
available (I don't go looking for mountain laurel in the areas around
these mountains, for example).