Howdy folks,
I'm enjoying this thread on the various woods and the attention to
the endangered woods. Back in the seventies I used to do a lot of wood
sculpture that I would carve from rare woods.
I had a friend from Costa Rica who works with the Botanical
Science center in the National forest come to visit. The guy lives
without electricity in a shack overgrown with tropicals, doesn't speak
english, acts as a guide for pharmacuetical companies, and National
Geographic and travels by horse so trips to the US are really a
culture shock for him. I enjoyed taking a guy from the jungle and
dumping him off at a 7-11.

We had a good time until he started looking closely at some of my
sculptures, carved from Coca Bola and other rare woods. He was very
polite but I could tell he was dismayed to see the end result of the
deforestation of his part of the world. For myself, as much as I was
raised with a western notion of art with a capital 'A' I had to admit
to myself in the scheme of things the wood would have been better off
left in the tree than decorating mine or anyone else's home.

I think that is something to consider when looking at high end
tools using exotic woods as chi chi selling points. Maybe there is
some sort of cosmic connection between Ms.Stewart's problems and rare
woods from Uganda.
Back in 1980 I worked for two years building on a bank building
at 15th anbd Guadelupe. When we got to doing the individual board
members offices on the top floor, the first board member had his
office trimmed out in mahogony, the second not wanting to look the
same, had his done in Walnut, the third wanting to top them both asked
what was a more expensive wood than either of those, and the architect
says, "Well, there's teak ?" And teak it was. Most expensive door I
ever mortised and hung.
Needless to say, the bank went belly up and somewhere down the line us
tax payers in the bailout bought a bunch of rare wood.

As wood sources are being depleted, the free market forces are at
work and at some point in the not too distant future, falling steel
prices will intersect with rising wood prices and a lot of house
framers are going to be learning a new set of skills.
Even the 'renewable' wood sources don't have time to attain any
size of much worth, so we are now replacing solid wooden floor joists
with composite beams made from two by fours and a panel of compressed
wood shavings glued together in a laminate. I was walking through a
house under cosntruction checking out the composite I-Beams over head,
thinking, 'That is a lot of faith to put into glue', time will tell.

Steve Coyle
www.austingardencenter.com