No day at the beech: despite its tendencies to warp when dry, American beech, if cured properly, has many uses.Family Name Fagus grandifolia of the Family Fagaceae Noun 1. family Fagaceae - chiefly monoecious trees and shrubs: beeches; chestnuts; oaks; genera Castanea, Castanopsis, Chrysolepis, Fagus, Lithocarpus, Nothofagus, Quercus beech family, Fagaceae Common Names American beech, beech, Carolina beech, gray beech, red beech, ridge beech, stone beech, white beech, winter beech Height/Weight Average height is 80 feet, but can grow to 100 feet or taller with diameters of 3 feet or more. Average weight is 45 pounds per cubic foot. Properties Experts recommend careful drying to avoid distortion, splitting and other problems. Wood suitable for steam bending. Wood machines easily. Beech is a hard, strong and dose-grained wood. Wood rates high in strength and shock resistance. Easily stained, painted and breached. Experts recommend close control of gluing. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] American beech, or Fagus grandifolia, is the only species of beech native to the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. . Long considered a general utility hardwood, beech's biggest claims to fame might be its strength and bending properties. American beech is often compared to oak and European beech in strength properties and is exceptionally good for steam bending. The wood is usually straight-grained, with a fine and even texture. It is an excellent choice for turnery and has long been used in woodenware, cooperage and food containers because the wood is odorless o·dor·less adj. Having no odor. o  dor·less·ly adv.o and tasteless. American beech's tong list of uses includes furniture, chair and furniture flames, flooring, interior joinery joinery, craft of assembling exposed woodwork in the interiors of buildings. Where carpentry refers to the rougher, simpler, and primarily structural elements of wood assembling, joinery has to do with difficult surfaces and curvatures, such as those of spiral , cooperage, woodenware, handles, boxes, crates, toys and bending stock. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Rick Hearne, of Hearne Hardwoods Inc., Oxford, PA, "You would use beech in casks, where you don't want any taste imparted." Beech can be used as an inexpensive secondary wood for painted furniture. It also has construction uses, such as pallets, railroad ties, etc. Morris Young, an employee of Groff and Groff Lumber Inc., Quarryville, PA, has had limited experience with American beech. "If you can find good quarter sawn beech, plane makers (hand planes) are using it. American beech is a good secondary-use wood, but is not in great demand that we see. Some make drawer sides out of it, but not too often." Hearne agreed that beech has a market for use as drawer sides, backs and other parts, "but there are so many other woods that will fulfill that application that are more stable--a drawer side manufacturer doesn't need to worry about making 100 sets of drawers and throwing away 12 of them." Hearne said his company, which handles more than 120 species from around the world, has handled American beech in the past, but no longer handles it. "We deal more with European beech, which we find more stable than American beech. With American beech, if we got in a shipment of 4,000 to 5,000 feet of it from Canada, we would end up throwing away 700 to 800 feet because it would twist and turn. "We get approximately one call a year for American beech. For fine furniture and architectural millwork it has almost no use because there are so many other woods that are more stable." Hearne said European beech is usually steamed. "Most North American North American named after North America. North American blastomycosis see North American blastomycosis. North American cattle tick see boophilusannulatus. manufacturers do not steam their beech, so the appearance usually will have a heartwood heartwood, the central, woody core of a tree, no longer serving for the conduction of water and dissolved minerals; heartwood is usually denser and darker in color than the outer sapwood. and a sapwood sapwood, relatively thin, youngest, outer part of the woody stem of a tree, the part that conducts water and dissolved materials. In the cross section of a tree, the sapwood is recognizable by its texture and color; it is softer and lighter than the inner heartwood. . Steamed American beech is almost identical to European beech." White American The term white American (often used interchangeably with "Caucasian American"[2] and within the United States simply "white"[3]) is an umbrella term that refers to people of European, Middle Eastern, and North African descent residing in the United States. beech may have some problems, it and its European counterpart are considered to be two beautiful species of trees. One Wet Wood According to Hearne, American beech is what the Europeans call a "nervous" wood. "Basically that translates to 'not that stable.' The cell structure just doesn't dry evenly. When it is green, it has an incredible amount of moisture in it. It is hard for a wood to give up that amount of moisture without destroying the cell structure," he said. "If you have ever used it for firewood, when you first cut it up, it is almost impossible to pick up the pieces, because they are so heavy. In a year, the same piece will be light. The moisture saturation is very high; when you try to dry it, you are removing so much moisture that the cells tend to distort." "It is tricky to dry because it gets little checks on it," said Young. "You can take a flat sawn piece and plane it; it will look good and two days later, it will have a bunch of little checks on it. It's what we call the nature of the beast Nature of the Beast is the ninth episode of The WB television series Birds of Prey. The episode aired on December 18, 2003. Summary When Al Hawke, her mother's killer, is hunted by The Specialist - a metahuman assassin with the ability to pass through solid ." Donald Culross Peattie writes in A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America North America, third largest continent (1990 est. pop. 365,000,000), c.9,400,000 sq mi (24,346,000 sq km), the northern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. , "Though in Europe the beech was utilized in every part by a wood-hungry civilization as the best of available hardwoods, in America the early settlers soon found 20 hardwood trees better than beech." Other Beeches As mentioned, Fagus grandifolia is the only species of beech that grows naturally in this country. American beech grows in the eastern United States and southeastern Canada. Other woods claim the name beech, including blue or water beech Wa´ter beech` 1. (Bot.) The American hornbeam. See Hornbeam. , but these trees, also known as American hornbeam hornbeam or ironwood, name in North America for two groups of trees of the family Betulaceae (birch family), native to the eastern half of the continent. Carpinus caroliniana, also called blue beech and water beech, has smooth gray bark. , are from the species Carpinus caroliniana. Water beech is also one of many names for sycamores, from the species Platanus occidentalis. European beech, Fagus sylvatica, grows throughout central Europe Central Europe is the region lying between the variously and vaguely defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. In addition, Northern, Southern and Southeastern Europe may variously delimit or overlap into Central Europe. and the United Kingdom and also grows in Asia. Editors note: 115 Wood of the Month articles are now online, with more coming soon. Visit the Wood of the Month archive at www.iswonline.com. |
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