Oxfordshire Woodland Group

The modern concept preached by Forestry Gurus is that we should aim to produce tall straight timber presumably for turning into beams and planks however this could be somewhat misguided in that bent trees can sometimes outperform straight trees when it comes to producing a woodcraft work of art.

image copyright C How 2012

The lower hall roof of the citadel tower at Hikone castle in Japan makes good use of bent and wavy timber in a way that defies present day understanding of just how the selection and use of "sub standard" timber could have been envisaged and then put into practice.

Maybe we should take more care of our bent trees.

Does anyone have any good photo examples of trees with character growing in their woodland ?

Chilterns

Didn't bent trees used to be used for sailing ships hulls?

The felling of larch logs for use in the OWG cruck timber-framed building project demonstrates some of the typical shapes of larch logs growing in a South Oxfordshire woodland.

These are a mixture of straight, single plane curved, single plane double curve (ogee) and irregular stems.

Laying the logs out together aids the selection, marking and cutting to length of each of the stems for use as specific building components.

The lowest or butt section of a log contains the highest quality timber with little or no knots evident and only pin or small knots contained within the log arising from early growth suppressed branches. Logs cut from higher up the tree will contain a mixture of both dead and larger live knots which will limit their usefullness as primary structural components however these might be perfectly useable in a lower grade service like wall studs and rafters.

Chilterns