The Man Who Made Things Out of Trees

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He never mentioned the sex lives of the ash tree which is quite varied. They are bisexual, some in all senses of the word, while others are straight, though this can change as well with time as can their sex. They are not alone in this, but are perhaps one of the best documented. I don't think I'm the first person to react about halfway through the book with the thought that this book should have been named 'The Men who made things out of A Tree'. The author is a good writer and talks to lots of interesting people and does cover a lot about woodworking. But the only thing he actually makes is firewood, so.... He discusses drying methods a little bit under each use with some general rules. It really is an important step that is surrounded by a lot of folklore & science where I'm not always sure which is correct. He takes the experts at their word, a good idea, IMO. While he discusses the need to air dry wood about a year per inch, he mentions a bit about kiln drying, although I would have liked to have heard more detail on the local methods since I know it varies by area & species. kept a more consistent depth among the various "technical" bits (sometimes it's very technical, sometimes you feel it could have been more exhaustive) The UK, however, is no forest frontrunner; we are one of the least-forested countries in Europe. According to the Woodland Trust, UK tree cover is well below the EU average, at 13% of land cover compared with 37%. The Climate Change Committee has advised that to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, tree cover must rise to 19% of the UK – about 1.5bn more trees, says the Woodland Trust. This means 22 trees each for everyone in the UK.

Throughout his travels--from his home in Wales, across Europe, and America--Penn makes a case for the continued and better use of the ash tree as a sustainable resource and reveals some of the dire threats to our ash trees. The emerald ash borer, a voracious and destructive beetle, has killed tens of millions of ash trees across North America since 2002. Unless we are prepared to act now and better value our trees, Penn argues, the ash tree and its many magnificent contributions to mankind will become a thing of the past. This exuberant tale of nature, human ingenuity, and the pleasure of making things by hand chronicles how the urge to understand and appreciate trees still runs through us all like grain through wood. A eulogy to the importance of ash throughout human history . . . Fascinating’ – Tobias Jones, GuardianI was annoyed at the first bit of the book as Penn discusses woodland management and tree surgery. Topics which I know a lot about and he just seemed like a standard 'tourist' wanted to play around on the edges of something cool, manly and dangerous. You come across these types when working as a tree surgeon. People who think they know shit about tree work because they own a shit chainsaw. As the book progressed however I did warm to it more as I learned bits about crafts I didn't know about. Penn has managed to talk to some cool, knowledgeable people. Incidentally I think I know someone who knows one of the wheelwrights from West Lancashire who the author goes to see. The chapter on hurley making was interesting too as well as the one where he gets the fletcher to make him a bodkin arrow. In 2012, Robert Penn felled (and replanted) a great ash from a Welsh wood. He set out to explore the true value of the tree of which we have made the greatest and most varied use in human history. How many things can be made from one tree? The Woodland Trust details numerous ways in which people can get involved. It runs several preservation initiatives, from recording the health of veteran trees in their area via the trust’s Ancient Tree Inventory, to helping map urban tree cover, which can then be used to lobby councils for more trees or better protection for existing ones.

Beautifully crafted, [ The Man Who Made Things Out of Trees ranges] freely over intellectual territory - masculinity, nostalgia, identity . . . Fascinating . . . Never have the benefits of getting your chopper out appeared more obvious (Robert Crampton, Books of the Year The Times) One of the most common uses for ash is tool handles. The experts are a little hazy about putting absolute date on when ash was first used, but it is safe to say that it has been used for several thousand years. The properties of ash make it the perfect material, it is tough, strong and flexible, not too heavy and the very act of handling the wood adds a patina to it making it nicer to handle. One of the last tool manufacturers in UK offer to turn some of his planks into axe handles, and he pays them a visit. In no time at all they are cut to shape, and sanded to the ideal shape. His first objects from that tree. The title is misleading -- Penn does not personally make most (if any?) of the items produced from his (singular) tree. This of course makes sense, as many of the artefacts he desires are specialised items, fashioned by expert craftsmen who in most cases have spent most of their lives honing their skills. An amateur would have no hope of replicating that sort of work. However, the overall narrative of the book is somewhat disappointing due to the combination of this and the fact that this is not quite the romantic mission it first appears. When you read that Penn has his own small wood, the expectation is that he is going to describe how he makes (or gets others to make) useful items from its products. Instead, Penn describes specifically searching the country for an 'ideal' ash tree, surveying woods and coppices until he finds one that meets his industrial criteria, and then felling it, sawing it, and canvassing a number of craftsmen around the world to get them to make curious items from his lumber. In many cases, his wood is still no good -- the industry prefers fast-grown ash to his hundred-plus-year-old slow-grown timber -- so these chapters describe craftsmen working with their preferred material (the descriptions of this still worth reading) and sending Penn away with a curio. There is no greater debt than that which mankind owes to trees, and Robert Penn proves this brilliantly - a highly readable account of the multitude of uses one single ash tree can provide (Lars Mytting, author of 'Norwegian Wood') This should be called The Man Who Didn't Make Things Out of Trees, or perhaps, The Man Who Got Other People to Make Things Out of Trees For Him. Robert Penn, as far as I can tell doesn't take part in any significant part of the process of making useful items from the tree he gets other people to select, fell, mill and process the timber for him.But it’s not all about planting new trees. The Woodland Trust, aligning with Kew’s rule “Protect existing forests first”, is seeking to preserve vulnerable ancient woodland. “At one point, woodland would have been the dominant landscape feature of the UK,” says the trust’s Bridget Fox. “But only 3%, on average, of the UK is now ancient woodland.” Places like Wychwood in Oxfordshire or Epping Forest on the outskirts of London are brimming with veteran oaks, lichens, fungi and flowers. “Soil that has only ever been wooded is so rich, supporting not only trees but other plants, bugs, birds, mammals and so on,” says Fox. Penn is a fine writer, and the mix of research, reportage and personal reflection is persuasive . . . A lovely book (Ed Cumming Observer) Talking to patrons planting their lifelong sequoias was a heartening experience: parents Richard and Eva were planting a tree for their young son Leon (“it’s for his future”). “I haven’t met a single patron who has been like, ‘I’m doing this so that I can carry on as I was’,” Emson says. “They are conscientious, doing it out of love for the planet. People who are off-setters don’t bother coming out to Wales to plant a tree.” Cities can also play a role – in the form of urban forests, parks, verges and traffic islands He meets, among others, a hurley maker, a bowl turner, a toboggan maker and a cabinet-maker, in a journey that takes him two years and includes visits to Austria, the US and Ireland (the hurley maker, unsurprisingly). Many of the craftsmen are in family businesses and are in the main a dying breed. Penn writes that Tom Mareschall, an arrowsmith, is one of only six men left in the UK who can draw a longbow. It’s a long way from Agincourt, where clouds of ash arrows unhorsed ranks of French knights. These trees are the most powerful on the planet for capturing carbon, he says. Unlike other conifers, such as Douglas fir and Sitka spruce, whose growth plateaus at a certain age, giant sequoias continue to grow and accumulate wood beyond maturity. “So their value for carbon capture keeps going for a millennium.”