Goodbye Bubinga

[custard]

The Ron Hock newsletter arrived today, in it he mentions that Bubinga has been added to the CITES class 2 list, so when current stocks are used up then it's pretty much gone as a furniture timber.

Blimey, timber species are falling like nine pins!

I'm hearing about a few furniture makers who are abandoning tropical timbers completely, and some are starting to use Douglas Fir for premium furniture. It's not the B&Q version of Douglas Fir though, it's the totally knot free, straight grained stuff that's as difficult to source as unicorn droppings.

 

[SteveF]

which is typical
as have many a good fire from Douglas Fir
think there is just a small bit at bottom of pile
had about 30 10 foot lengths that I could see no use for
how embarrassing
my local sawmill always has clean douglas fir in the round
Steve

 

[Peter Sefton]

I received this newsletter just before Xmas talking about the position with Bubinga.

http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=9fb ... 5961fa52eb

I was also talking to one of our tool suppliers yesterday who tells me they will know more in February about the future of using Bubinga. A lot of the tool makers have been using Bub for a few years, Veritas, Clifton, AI not sure what the knock on effect will be yet.

Cheers Peter

 

[Cheshirechappie]

For tool handles, I suppose they could fall back on plantation-grown rosewood, or even good old beech. Makes you wonder how much longer supplies of stuff like sapele will last.

As the world's population increases and becomes more wealthy, I can see timber in general and exotic timber in particular becoming gradually more expensive as demand for it increases, unless someone comes up with a GM tree that grows to full maturity in about ten years and yields high-grade hardwood (cypressus leylandii doesn't count!).

 

[Stormer1940]

Hi,

Interesting read. I'm not lucky enough to have used Bubinga myself but what other timbers are becoming scarce?

 

[custard]

Hi,

Interesting read. I'm not lucky enough to have used Bubinga myself but what other timbers are becoming scarce?

The one I keep hearing about is Wenge. I've noticed the quality deteriorate over the past few years to the point that really good quality Wenge is becoming pretty difficult to find.

Astonishingly English Walnut is already in the lowest CITES category, so there's always the chance that might be moved up a grade at which point it couldn't be exported without special dispensation. There's an African timber called Ovangkol which is very similar to English Walnut, we hardly use it in this country, but it's popular in the US amongst designer/makers where it's known as Shedua (by the way, this is not the timber that's called African Walnut). Ovangkol is not under threat and more is coming into this country, in particular if you're lucky enough to find some rippled boards it's a fabulous timber.

All Rosewoods are now CITES 2, so for all practical purposes we won't be getting much more in the future.

A surprise is Cuban Mahogany. About a hundred years cuttings were taken from the West Indies to Indonesia for plantation growing, the first thinning are now appearing on the UK market. As thinnings they aren't particularly wide boards, but they're amazing quality and completely legal and sustainable.

 

[giantbeat]

have known about this since late November, its going to be interesting to see how it affects various industries, my trade which is musical instruments has been very quiet about it.... which is interesting as both Bubinga & Rosewoods are used massively in the drum & guitar world.

the big drum trade shows in the usa are next week, i will be paying attention to see whats on display.

 

[RogerS]

The heightened demand for many (most?) exotic hardwoods has been around for quite a while and attributed to the demand from affluent Chinese middle classes. When I was making the long-case clocks a while back, over the course of two years zebrano quadrupled in price and it wasn't that cheap to start with.

 

[MattRoberts]

Worth hanging on to any stock you have for a few years then!

 

[ScaredyCat]

Qiangsheng / Luban appear to have stopped using it on their new planes too

 

[sunnybob]

Oh oh, I'd better go down and buy some more bubinga while i can. Shame i dont have a warehouse to stock it in, my local has huge baulks of the stuff.
they also have some nice wenge planks, maybe i need to convince the wife its an investment.Beech is a nice wood to work but its quite plain to look at.

 

[MikeG.]

If you saw the state of African woodland and forests, you'd be amazed that any trees from there weren't on the CITES red list. Governance and licensing is so poor, and corruption so rife, that my view is that any and every timber species can be considered at risk. I personally haven't used any tropical hardwoods for 30 years, and never will. I have never seen a sustainable timber industry anywhere on the entire continent of Africa, and I've covered much of it. All that was the case even before China arrived 10 or 15 years ago and began industrial scale theft of Africa's forests (and wildlife).

 

[Droogs]

looks like we will be calling ourselves medefiworkers and veneerists from now one. Just think in 30 years no-one will be working wood unless they put it aside over the last few years, shame

 

[Eric The Viking]

This is probably one of the more important threads of the last few years. It's a horrifying concept that we will run out of trees, as well as everything else. But it is not impossible at all.

One has an image of Trump's White House standing alone in a nuclear-raized landscape with a banner down the front saying, "I won, I made America great again." I realise he's not to blame for this (personally... yet), but the attitude he espouses certainly is, as China seems to want to prove.

In the not-too-distant past, I've seen those little flowers lightly carved in boards, so that they qualify as "manufactured goods" for export. Like drug smuggling, they only do it because there is a market for the export, but the difference with wood is that the rainforest will be felled anyway, and simply burned if the wood isn't valued.

Our first grandchild was born last November. I recently bought Blizzard's book on toys from another forum member. I have small stocks of some of the hardwoods he suggests for making toy lorries, etc, but there's no point, as my grandson is a Californian, and anything I sent would be stolen by customs, irrespective of how my boards have been sourced (they're all old stock). I know what they are, but I can't prove it. Obviously I'm probably going to try, but the whole thing has brought it home to me dramatically.

Could we get first world pension funds to take up plantation-growing, particularly of rainforest trees? It ought to give an excellent return over, se, fifty years - beyond my lifetime, but it's probably far more important than saving rhinos per se (not that I'd want to give those up lightly either!). It's only a variation on the plantation schemes after WW1 here in the UK, after all.

If we don't/can't "vote" with our money and influence, it's hard to see this will end well.

E.
(trying hard not to feel depressed about this).

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Something positive may come of this trend.

Certainly, we may lose supplies of tropical timbers, and pressure of demand on remaining supplies may push up cost. However, that may open up the possibility of commercial viability of managing domestic woodland for timber production, which in turn may make the operation of smaller local sawmills viable, too. No doubt it would change the way we use wood products, with innovative ways to maximise the utility of what we do produce, and the offering of currently non-commercial species such as hornbeam. The change would probably be gradual over several decades, too.

How the growing of bulk softwoods in more northern areas of the Baltic and Russia (from where we import a large proportion of our building and joinery timber, I gather) would be affected, I don't know. It also seems that quite large areas of North America produce both hardwoods and softwoods, but I'm not sure how sustainable those supplies are over the medium to long term.

Thus, it may not be entirely bad news if local supplies become more commercially viable, though it's probably almost inevitable that what is offered will cost more.

 

[MikeG.]

looks like we will be calling ourselves medefiworkers and veneerists from now one. Just think in 30 years no-one will be working wood unless they put it aside over the last few years, shame

Not at all. Wow, that really is missing the point. Europe and north America have vast amounts of sustainable timber, and it is really lovely stuff too. Use that and rest easy at night. I mean, much of the beech and ash (and even oak) felled in Europe goes for firewood!! We aren't getting anywhere near outstripping the supply. Third world/ tropical sources are all, in my view, entirely flawed, and should all be off-limits. I'd love to see a global ban in timber trading from the tropics, but until that happens, I simply operate my own personal version by boycotting such timbers.

 

[Bodgers]

Qiangsheng / Luban appear to have stopped using it on their new planes too

They wouldn't be able to ship outside of China if they did

I think the new ones are using Maple?

EDIT: Apparently, cherry. Same as the new Stanley SWs.



Sent from my MI 3W using Tapatalk

 

[yetloh]

Horrifying though it is none of this surprises me. I have pretty much sworn off tropical hardwoods for the last ten years or so and also try to limit my use of north American species to limit timber miles. I have a few bits of tropicals from years ago but try to husband them carefully. I think we all have a responsibility here which we should take seriously. I know tropical hardwood use by amateurs and British bespoke furniture makers is a drop in the bucket globally but that isn't really the point. I would like to see the high end British makers setting an example and making a noise about it - it's all about setting the tone.

Interestingly someone mentioned hornbeam. My daughter works for the National Trust at Hatfield Forest and they have sales of timber from the forest which has been felled as part of their management of the forest and I now have a nice big board of hornbeam at a reasonable price. I have to dry it myself but so what, it can go into my draughty workshop loft for a couple of years when it will be lovely. Not easy to work but also not a bad substitute for American maple.

Another interesting species is holm oak (Quercus ilex). I was recently visiting a friend whose son is a tree surgeon so he has access to trees that need to be felled. A recent acquisition has been a nice holm oak, the timber from which is stunning, much darker than English oak and beautiful figure.

Jim

 

[Ttrees]

I'd love to see some hornbeam planked up.
It getting to be a common border tree these days, instead of leylandii, maybe the introduction of height regulations
on residential property's has set this trend.
Lie-Nielsen makes chisel handles from the stuff, so it must be like a rock

I spoke to a local guitar shop man about CITES an Indian rosewood being on cat 2 on the list
He wasn't aware of anything atall, and thought I was trying to have a go at him for a minute, I think.

Get your resaws ready, if you want my opinion...
I might look back at my reclaimed iroko in years to come, thinking I could have made those timbers into veneers
(in truth, I'll still be buried in it )

Tom

 

[shed9]

On the flip side of this, the way it is going I suspect we may need to document every bit of timber being traded as the list grows. I'm aware that UK/US customs have been a little heavy handed in confiscating anything with possible CITES relevant timber as a whole or part of another item (i.e old Stanley planes, etc). Given that their ability to correctly identify species and the very nature of what they do, wouldn't be too much of a leap to be expected to evidence species and provenance of anything timber based going forward.

I concur Chesterchappie that this may indeed re-ignite domestic markets but that is going to take a while to engage.

Depressing news indeed.