American Beech

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Jan 10, 2020

Beech is a fine wood for simple kitchen spoons with handles turned on the lathe and bowls shaped by hand.

Charles Taplin

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Jan 03, 2020

Thanks for the article. A good read.

Chris

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Jan 03, 2020

It may not be fair to malign the noble Beech tree, as dodging ‘the work of the World’ as Peattie mused… Indeed, it was at one time, renowned for the very New England values mentioned above… hardiness and resilience! Well known is the beech’s contribution to wildlife, though I never realized how high the protein of the beechnut was… That explains the frenzied harvest of them by Nature’s minions, only exceeded by the race for the butternuts. Nor would I have realized that resilience from my experience in the sugar-bush, removing beech stems from close proximity to the sugar maples for greater sap production. The wood produced was some of the best firewood available in Northern New Hampshire, having a higher BTU content than sugar maple, red oak, and yellow birch, which are nearly in a ‘dead heat’ for second place. <grin>  Only white oak rivals beech for heat output, until we roam a ways south and run into stands of hickory, which beats them all. But, trying to store beech for future use is quite a problem… so many organisms like to devour beech, that it is one of the least durable hardwoods. A pile left one season in the woods will turn black, and a stack of beech firewood will seldom last three years before turning into a pile of punky wood, insects, fungi, and compost. So how was this champion of wildlife hardy and resilient? Beech is one of the hardest ‘wearing’ of the hardwoods… it was used in the construction of wagon wheel hubs because it could take wear so well. For the same reason, it was sometimes used for flooring, where it outlasted other species. The most prevalent use though, was for shoe pegs. Beech shoe pegs were among the most long-lasting and durable. In the late 70’s and early 80’s we were still able to sell beech bolts (appx. 4ft. lengths) to a religious outfit in Bartlett, NH that still made shoe pegs made from round slices cut from the bolts. The Old Timers knew specific uses for each specie like the one described here. They knew things we have nearly lost now… such as tamarack will last nearly forever if used underwater (as in a dock footing) and a black locust sill board could nearly outlast the concrete it was laid upon. Poplar, is now more widely used for trim (because pine is more expensive) and is among the most glue-able and paint-able of the hardwoods - but it won’t hold a nail as well. It is fascinating to me just how much specific knowledge of each species our forebears had… knowledge we use less often in today’s world of injection-mold plastics and man made materials…. and when a tragedy like a house fire occurs, all those plastics and vinyl (etc.) are liberated into the atmosphere as toxins. Maybe we should go back and use the old knowledge and old materials to a greater extent. There are some 330,000 house fires in the US every year - there were 13,000 structures lost in the Camp fire alone last year (Pasadena, CA), and the smoke output was five times the combined industrial output of the US at the time. The trees are not only our friends. They are our future as well.

Paul Hayward

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Jan 02, 2020

Thank for an informative article as we have a beech by our house about 28"in diameter by the base. Besides the beach of beech nuts we get every year and clean up, we love it.

ted gribbell