Claudio DeLorenzi wrote:
>
>For a historical perspective (hey, I am a history buff) the ancient Romans used
beech for their planes.  Roman planes, I am sure were made of beech- at least
the ones that have been found in various places.  Yes, 2000 plus year old
planes, some of which still had some wood remants!...So we have at least a 2500
year history of beech use for planes, and if there was something better, I think
you can safely bet we would probably know about it by now!<


There's another point to be remembered about the use of beech in European
planes: beech was the General Utility Hardwood in northern Europe, at least from
the Middle Ages onward, and Europe had far less variety in woods than America
does.
There's a line of demarcation through southern France and northern Italy or
Switzerland: north of the line they have mixed hardwood forests with beech
predominating, south of the line they have softwood forests. This was probably
true back into Roman times, though I can't document it. Early in the middle ages
you had a lot of oak in England, maybe it predominated then, but shipbuilding
and charcoal burning for ironworking shifted the balance to beech in England.
You didn't have a lot of selection in Eurpoean woods apart from oak, beech, and
softwoods---  a little walnut, some domestic cherry and fruitwoods, a bit of
ash, birch in Scandinavia, but no locust, no wild cherry, no hickory, no maple,
no profusion of species. Its all down to the Ice Ages, I gather: the ice caps
scoured Europe to the dirt but didn't come as far south in America.

So in most of Europe, beech was the default hardwood. Still is. Furniture in
Northern Europe was made of beech before tropical hardwoods started coming in
(oak in England); afterwards, it was veneered on beech. In Southern Europe,
softwoods were treated the same way, except maybe painted on softwood like the
gaudy "cassoni" of Venice's great days, painted on "cipresso." I know about this
because medieval book boards were beech in Germany, oak in England, (maybe)
walnut in France, softwood in Spain, "cipresso" in Italy. By the 19th century
beech was what you used for planes in Europe because it was what you had.

In America, yeah, a lot of planes were birch. If its what they had around. But
not all of them by any means. I'd be surprised if there weren't just as many of
hard maple. You use what you have around and is economical. Maybe you use the
best of what you have, but you use what you have.

That old story about using the mechanically best wood for the different parts of
a Windsor chair, like the Deacon's One-Horse Shay? That was only in America, not
in England. And then they painted over the whole thing so that you couldn't tell
what the wood was.

By the way, I found the Clark & Williams article about the virtues of beech:


http://www.planemaker.co
m/articles_beech.html

Old Street Tool's website is still right there, they just aren't taking new
orders until their backlog is cleared. If you don't know this site backwards and
forwards, well, you should.

Tom Conroy
Berkeley