Fellow Members ---

We use a lot of trees!

I had just returned from England when I saw a picture in the San Francisco Chronicle identical to the picture I had just taken on my trip. It is of Wythenshawe Hall in Manchester, a house built in about 1540. In 1643 it was the site of a long siege during the English Civil war (you remember that was when Cromwell was fighting the loyalists?). The hall also happens to be less than a mile from where I spent my childhood so I was always fascinated by its heavy solid construction.

The Chronicle story was about the number of trees needed to build a house. It explained that in the 1600s, before builders knew much about the strengths of wood, etc., they tended to use heavy timbers to be on the safe side. In those days a typical house would require about 72 small oak trees for framing plus 7 larger mature oak trees for the wider planks which was about 68 acres of oak forest. A larger house, such as Wythenshawe Hall, could use more than 300 trees, or more than 280 acres of oak forest.

In 1950 the average American house used about 9,000 board feet of framing lumber which was about of 45 trees, mostly softwoods.

Today, due to building codes and more use of plywood etc. a typical American house requires about 17,000 board feet. That's about 85 trees.

I also visited the DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park a couple of weeks ago while they were assembling an interesting artwork by Maya Lin titled "2 x 4 Landscape". The art installation, representing a rolling landscape, is assembled from many thousands of 2x4 inch timbers of different lengths stacked side by side on end. (they were created using a computer generated cutting list). This 30 ton structure uses 40,000 board feet of sustainable timber, i.e.: approximately 200 trees.

So the maths summary is:

1600s Small English house: 79 trees

1600s Big English house: 300 trees

1950s Typical American house: 45 trees

2008 Typical American house: 88 trees

2008 De Young art installation: 200 trees

I am glad we have moved to sustainable timber.

Moving to smaller things I hope we see many of you with boxes for our November meeting Box Contest and this year in December are planning to have our first ever Christmas Ornament Contest so it is time to start using up your odd scraps of wood. Our contests allow the use of unsustainable timber, provided you do not have to fell a tree specifically for the purpose.