On 26 Nov 2004 12:29:33 GMT, otforme (Charlie Self)
wrote:

I don't know what kind of elm they've got in
Blighty, but I'd guess it isn't much more fun for hand work.

Dead, mostly. Since Dutch elm disease hit in the '70s. A piece big
enough for a seat base is now worth good money. As you said,
interlocked grain is the problem with hand working it.

Actually we have _lots_ of elms, just not a useful size. Our elms
(except wych elm) reproduce by suckering and the beetle-borne diseases
kill the trunk rather than killing the root crown. If you look around
hedges when the leaves are off you can often see a line of small elm
trees in the hedge, all but the last one are dead. The tree puts up
a stem that grows happily for a few years until it's a small tree,
maybe 8' high and 4" diameter. Below this size, the beetles don't
bore into it. When it gets a bit bigger the beetles arrive and kill
the new trunk. The root responds by suckering and forming a new stem a
few feet away. A few years later, the cycle repeats again. This seems
to be on the opposite side from the original stem's source, so these
new trunk form a straight line. I've seen lines of five or six dead
trunks that must have been growing like this since the disease's
original arrival.


Still, if you're going to import problematic foreign critters, at
least elm beetles aren't as bad as Stalin's Giant Crabs
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.../ixportal.html
--
Smert' spamionam