Woodworker's Journal 2008-32-5, страница 24

SUO? ViUL

How about it, readers? Are you wood collectors, too? Send in a photo of your most

unusual wood specimen (like this giant slab of American Chestnut) — and tell us your name, where you hail from, the name of your specie y

interesting story behind it. We'll post these as part of our "More on the Web-feature to accompany an upcoming issue.

Send your photos to woodworkersiourna! .com.

The FPL wood collection, born in 1910, was initially headed by a woman, Eloise Gerry. Oversight of the FPL collection was dominated for the next 70 years by a succession of men with long tenure.

Bohumil Kukachka's [1945-early 1970s] hiring is legendary, though only to inveterate wood geeks. During his interview for the position of wood anatomist, Kuky casually plucked three unmarked specimens of wood off [Arthur, 1914-1948] Koehler's desk and proclaimed, "Ah, Chilean woods. Nothofagus, Laurelia, and Aextoxicon." He was hired on the spot

At the start of Koehler's I I tenure, the collection stood at only a few thousand samples, f mostly domestic. By the time ! he left, the collection stood at t about 11,000 (greatly reduced | in a subsequent houseclean-, ing). Koehler put the field of K wood anatomy on the map by V helping solve the crime of the • century, the Lindbergh kidnapping crime. [WJ Editor's Note: The wood as key to this \ mystery is described in detail else; where in the book.] f By the time Regis Miller [1970-2000s] stepped on the scene, the collection had more than tripled in size due in part to the acquisi-1 tion of the 5,500-specimen

Samuel J. Record (SJR) wood col-m lection from the School of * Forestry at Yale, the world's largest collection. The collection included the critical herbarium sheets: samples of the leaves, seeds, flowers and other "soft" material of the trees from which the wood was harvested. (Herbaceous material is critical, since the woods of many trees are anatomically identical, and true differentiation can be determined only by leaves, seeds and so forth.)

Also scattered about the FPL offices are dozens of mammoth tree "rounds" from the Jesup collection. They're much (much) larger than the standard-size wood sample but not nearly as large as they were originally. "In the 1860s, this guy had the foresight to cut 5-foot-long-boles from the trunk of every type of tree that grew in the United States. And he got 'em all." explains Miller, wearing the omnipresent lOx magnifying loupe around his neck. "Back then you could just chop down whatever you wanted. Today, even if you could do that, it would cost you a fortune."

So how much wood could a wood collector collect? Keep counting. @

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Got Wood?

Brian Baker, who turns saucers out of specimens — 800, all different species — explains "Most [woods] were pleasurable, with good aroma, turnability and polish, but there are some I hope to never turn again, like Toxicodendron radicans - poison ivy." Woodcarving teacher Norm Satorius has a different brand of chilling story. He once told his students to bring in a piece of wood that meant something to them. An older gentleman brought in a piece of wood from a hanging tree. "Some people in class would not even touch the wood," Satorius explains. "It was a plain piece of oak, unremarkable in color and grain, but laden with history of a rather grave nature."

While this all may seem to edge upon fanaticism, it's no different from any other type of collecting.

[And] if you think these collectors have a daunting array of woods, walk into the Forest Product Laboratory (FPL) in Madison, Wisconsin, and ask to take a look at their wood collection. There you'll find not dozens, not hundreds, not thousands, but tens of thousands of wood specimens — 100,000, to be exact.

Alex Wiedenhoeft, an FPL botanist, ruminates: "I worked here for a long time thinking this was-the dullest place on earth, because basically the wood collection is drawers and drawers of little blocks of wood. It's the world's largest wood library, and like a regular library, if you don't know how to read, it is the dullest place on earth. It's not until you start reading the blocks that you realize what an amazing place it is. The more you learn about this stuff, the more interesting it is."

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October 2008 Woodworker's Journal