Specific Topic 7.2 Timber

Specific Topic 7.2 Timber

1. 7.2.1 Natural Timbers - Hardwoods

   • Balsa (1)
     • very lightweight easy to cut 
   • Beech (1)
     • a tough wood does not crack or splinter as easily  hard wood
   • Mahongony (1)
     • has an attractive finish quite easy to work around
   • Oak (1)
     • strong + durable  has an attractive grain when well finished
   • Jelutong
     • even  close grain is easy to cut and shape
   • Birch
     • regular  even grain and easy to work with
   • Ash
     • strong + tough  flexible and finishes well 

2. 7.2.2 Natural Timbers - Softwoods

   • Larch
     • tough durable and resistent to water it can be used outside untreated and fades to a silvery grey 
   • Pine (1)
     • very durable  easy to work with  quit cheap as it grows faster so it can easily be forested
   • Cedar (1)
     • natural oils make it resistant to water and fungal growth.

3. 7.2.3

   • Plywood (1)
     • Plywood is a sheet material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another.
   • Medium Dencity Fibreboard (1)
     • Medium-density fibreboard is an engineered wood product made by breaking down hardwood or softwood residuals into wood fibres, often in a defibrator, combining it with wax and a resin binder, and forming 
   • Chipboard
     • Particle board – also known as particleboard, low-density fibreboard, and chipboard – is an engineered wood product manufactured from wood chips, sawmill shavings, or even sawdust, and a synthetic

4. 7.2.4 Sources and origins

   • Alpine forests
     • Alpine plants occur in a tundra: a type of natural region or biome that does not contain trees. Alpinetundra occurs in mountains worldwide. It transitions to subalpine forests below the tree line; stunted forestsoccurring at the forest-tundra ecotone are known as Krummholz.
     • Pine
       • make or become dry through intense heat.
     • Cedar
       • any of a number of conifers which typically yield fragrant, durable timber, in particular:
     • Larch
       • a coniferous tree with bunches of deciduous bright green needles, found in cool regions of the northern hemisphere. It is grown for its tough timber and its resin (which yields turpentine).
   • European forests
     • The palaearctic Western European broadleaf forestsis an ecoregion, in the Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests Biome, that covers a large area in Western Europe including: Switzerland, Austria, France, Germany and Czech Republic.
     • Oak
       • strong durable has an attractive finish
     • Beech
       • a tough wood  does not crack or splinter easily  hard wood
     • Ash
       • strong  tough flexible and finishes well
     • Larch
       • tough  durable and resistant to water it can be used outside untreated and it fades to a silver grey
   • Amazonian forests
     • The Amazon rainforest, covering much of northwestern Brazil and extending into Colombia, Peru and other South American countries, is the world’s largest tropical rainforest, famed for its biodiversity. It’s crisscrossed by thousands of rivers, including the powerful Amazon. River towns, with 19th-century architecture from rubber-boom days, include Brazil’s Manaus and Belém and Peru’s Iquitos and Puerto Maldonado.
     • Mahogany
       • has a very attractive finish  quite easy to work with

5. 7.2.5 Physical Characteristics

   • Knots
     • Dead branches drop off healthy, living trees all the time, and wood knots appear in the trunk where branches died. Knots are imperfections that cause living wood grain to grow around them.
   • Colour
     • Color or colour is the characteristic of human visual perception described through color categories, with names such as red, blue, yellow, green, orange, or purple.
   • Grain structure
     • A grain boundary is the interface between two grains, or crystallites, in a polycrystalline material. Grainboundaries are 2D defects in the crystal structure, and tend to decrease the electrical and thermal conductivity of the material.
   • Density
     • The density, or more precisely, the volumetric mass density, of a substance is its mass per unit volume. The symbol most often used for density is ρ, although the Latin letter D can also be used.

6. 7.2.6 Properties

   • Compressive strength
     • the resistance of a material to breaking under compression.
   • Tensile strength
     • the resistance of a material to breaking under tension.
   • Elasticity
     • the ability of an object or material to resume its normal shape after being stretched or compressed; stretchiness.
   • Durability (1)
     • the ability to withstand wear, pressure, or damage.
   • Toughness (1)
     • In materials science and metallurgy, toughness is the ability of a material to absorb energy and plastically deform without fracturing. One definition of materialtoughness is the amount of energy per unit volume that a material can absorb before rupturing.
   • Hardness (1)
     • the quality or condition of being hard.

7. 7.2.7 Social footprint

   • Trend forcasting
     • WGSN (World's Global Style Network) provide data, analytics and insights to companies seeking to stay ahead of the curve across a broad range of industries, but their most successful category is their fashion trend forecasting. WGSN claim to be able to forecast colours and trends up to two years in advance.
   • Recycling and Disposal
     • Recycling. Recycling means reprocessing a material so that it can be used again. This helps to reduce damage to the environment by reducing the need for new materials. For example, this might mean melting plastic parts so that they can be shaped into new products.
   • Logging impact
     • Logging operations on the national forests of the Sierra Nevada continue to have a significant detrimental impact on the ecological health of these vital forest systems. Nevertheless, we also know that in some cases a responsible thinning operation is needed to reduce the fuel profile to promote fire resiliency. A fire resilient forest is one that can survive regular fire, as these forests once did before the era of intensive logging and fire suppression.

8. 7.2.8 Ecological footprint

   • Sustainability
     • avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance.
   • Deforestation
     • Deforestation, clearance or clearing is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a non-forest use. Examples of deforestation include conversion of forestland to farms, ranches, or urban use
   • Habitat impacts
     •  Habitat impact assessment may be new and unfamiliar to some deer managers. However there are four key reasons for assessing or understanding how to assess habitat impacts: Deer are dependent on the habitat as well as impacting on it.
   • Processing
     • As the Ecological Footprint measures the area required to produce a material or absorb carbon dioxide emissions, materials such as mercury that are not created by biological processes nor absorbed by biological systems do not have a definedEcological Footprint (although their extraction, processing
   • Transportation
     • Transport or transportation is the movement of humans, animals and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land, water, cable, pipeline and space. The field can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles and operations.
   • Wastage
     • the reduction in the size of a workforce as a result of voluntary resignation or retirement rather than enforced redundancy.
   • Pollution
     • Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light