On Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:09:57 -0500, scritch wrote
(in message ):

On 4/15/2010 9:55 AM, tom koehler wrote:
Just got home from a trip out west. Me and SWMBO travel with a home made
teardrop trailer and this time we went to the western deserts in California
to see some of the spring bloom. Got some swell pics, and when I saw the
Joshua Trees, I had an idea... what about wood from these trees? Maybe they
aren't properly a tree, but by golly, the trunk looks like wood and feels
like wood. The information plaque says there aee no growth rings. The cross
section of a trunk looks like a single homogeneous woody mass, and feels
quite solid and woodlike. I really wanted to cut a chunk off one of the
downed dead and very dry trunks I saw there, but it is Federal land and a
National Park. Taking a chunk of that wood would have been a Very Bad
Thing.
My query, then, is, is it wood, or not? The followup question naturally
would
be, has anyone worked with this stuff? Is there a reasonable and legal
source
of this maybe wood? I know I could probably google these questions, but
thought I'd get better quality answers straight from the well.

tom koehler

Wait a minute! How do they know Josuha trees are thousands of years old
if they don't have rings?



arrgh, there's the rub. So far, there are fair estimates, and that's it.
Pictures taken of a particular stand a hunnerd years ago, and then comparing
with a contemporary picture of the same stand and finding some trees in both
pics. Current estimating methods in some circles is to say that they likely
grow "x" inches per year, and then extrapolate the mergafferator into a
conclusion that some of the bigger trees are maybe a hundred and fifty years
old, give or take 20 or 30 years or so. Approximately.

I just think it would be fun to turn some of this stuff. I saw plenty of dead
and very dry Joshua trees in the desert, and they seemed quite solid and
reasonably hard... and illegal to cut a chunk offa government land.

chicken with no bone, cherry with no stone, and now wood with no grain, oh
my.

tom koehler
--
I will find a way or make one.