Rock Croft Safe® Eyes – Product Review

Un-Fog-Able protective eye wear that will not fog, scratch or smear.

Review by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Most, if not indeed all, ordinary safety goggles and -“glasses” have one major drawback, when you discount that the lenses scratch very easily indeed, and that is the fogging up in a variety of conditions, leading to loss of vision.

Safe® Eyes mesh safety goggles by Rock Croft, on the other hand, eliminate both of these problems. No fogging and they also are not affected by scratching. On both counts this is due to the fact that the “lenses” are not lenses but are made of a blackened stainless steel mesh. They will also not smear.

While seeing through the mesh takes a little getting used to, much in the same way when using a mesh visor on a chainsaw helmet, one soon does not even really notice the mesh pattern anymore.

The Safe® Eyes goggles are, basically, your mesh visor in goggle/safety glasses format, with the “lenses” being very strong and resistant to many a thing.

While the Safe® Eyes mesh goggles do not protect the whole face, or at least most of it, in the way does your helmet visor does, they do prevent stufgf getting into your eyes. The face heals; your eyes won't.

Often sawdust and bigger particles with much greater velocity, and thus even more dangerous bit than mere sawdust, still can and will get into your eyes despite wearing a helmet with visor – I speak from experience – and it is for that reason that forestry workers in Germany, for instance, now must wear eye protection under the visor.

Safe® Eyes on their own, in fact, would suffice in my opinion and experience, and it makes it thus possible to leave the visor away.

There are a couple of different style of this kind of eye protection, that is to say Safe® Eyes, available and one version, so I was told, I currently on trial with the (US) military.

This would definitely be a product that I am happy enough to endorse and promote.

For more information check out the website at: http://www.meshsafetygoggles.co.uk/ and http://www.safe-eyes.co.uk/

© 2011

Coppicing: a woodland management system of the past for the future

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Coppicing is an ancient woodland management practice that needs to be revitalized and reestablished if we want to have a sustainable supply of timber for a variety of purposes. Bean poles are but a small section of this, as is making of lump wood charcoal.

Coppicing has been carried out in British woodlands as, more or less, the mode of woodland management until just about the 1960s from night time immemorial.

It was in the 1960s when rather misinformed and misguided “environmentalists”, those who have read a lot but know little to nothing, put a stop to it claiming that those were ancient woodlands that needed to be left to return to their normal state.

Little did they know that they about signed the death warrant for those woods for, without proper continued coppice maintenance those woods will, in fact, die.

Coppice stools that are not maintained will, in the end, break apart and the trees will die. It is as simple as that.

Instead of being bad for woodlands and forests coppicing actually benefits the trees and the environment as a whole.

Much like pruning a rose or a fruit tree to encourage growth, coppicing, basically, has the same effect. Unlike pruning a tree or a rose it is a little harsher and not done as often but, in return, bring usable timber.

Not all trees can be coppiced (or pollarded) and some reproduce better than others.

The great majority of conifers, if not indeed all, do not respond to this treatment and some deciduous trees also do not.

We are lucky, in a way, as far as coppicing goes. It is not rocket science and book knowledge and learning can get it revitalised.

This makes it somewhat different from the use of crosscut saw and other old forestry ways.

Some skills can only be learned from a “master” in the filed, and not (just) from books. The sharpening of saws and axes is one; the setting of saw teeth another and the latter is much more difficult to learn than sharpening.

But, I digressed.

Some people, environmentalists included, still do not get coppicing (or forest management per se) and some, alas, also immediately seem to turn off listening when professional foresters try to make the case for forest management, even the most sustainable types of it.

I have been told, nay accused, more than ones, “but you are a commercial forester!” and aye, that is true but what does that have to do with it and why can a forester not be caring for the environment. In fact all proper ones do.

It is the same with advocating the old “clean forest” police – which even the Forestry Commission is staring to “get”, finally – where all debris, more or less, as in dead branched, tops of felled trees, etc., was taken away from the site (or burned on site) to avoid and prevent the transfer of diseases and also fire ladders.

Today the call goes out that habitat piles is what we need “for the wildlife”, as in fungi and invertebrates, etc.

The fact is that the forests under the “clean forest” policy that I worked in as a young man had more wildlife and were more alive with mushrooms of all kinds and much healthier than are place with hundreds of habitat piles.

Let's take a closer look at the old ways again. They may be able to teach us something about sustainable practices and about making use of everything.

© 2011

Tree marking knife; the sustainable forestry tool

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

This tool, in German called Baumreisser, and produced, predominately by German and Swiss tool makers, such as Victorinox (Switzerland) and Otter (Germany), has been an important tool for the forestry worker and forester in time past.

The tree marking knife, the Baumreisser (tree ripper), was used in the past by forestry workers after a tree had been felled and the branches removed used to mark the cutting length depending on the timber grade. Foresters too used this tool in order to mark trees for removal, either small trees for thinning operations or even large trees in mature stands. Those were marked with a cross, an “X”.

It has, in recent decades, been replaced, some would say superseded, by the spray can and the paint ball gun for marking trees for felling, whether large or small, and even as a marker as to where to make the cuts in a trunk according to timber value and class.

As far as I am concerned, however, the tree marking knife cannot and should not ever be seen as superseded and replaced as spray paint is not sustainable and that for at least two reasons.

Spray paint is costly in the long run and while a tree marking knife costs up to $60, depending on quality and source, it will last a lifetime and more, if looked after. Paint, on the other hand, is costly in the long run. While a can of the stuff may “only” cost a few dollars at a time over time it will be much, much more than the cost of the tool.

The measuring staff of the woodsmen that I have encountered in years gone by in Europe used to have a built-in “bark ripper” for the purpose of marking the place where to cross cut the trunk.

The folding Baumreisser, the tree marking knife, is better though as the forester can carry that with him easily on a “patrol” and mark trees for removal as and when they are noticed.

I encountered such a tree marking knife again only recently on the Felco stand at the 2011 RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show when the marketing manager showed me one of which they were given boxes and did not really know what they were for.

Initially even I, as a professional forester, failed to recognize them as I had only encountered them with a fixed blade or as part of another tool and I mistook the took for a hoof knife. Shame on me, I know.

It would appear that makers – some of them at least – are in the process of divesting themselves of the stock of those tools in the – in my opinion false – belief that the end of the tree marking knife has come.

The ones that I saw (and of which I was given a box) are made by Victorinox and are, in fact, no longer shown in their range. German makers still seem to produce them though.

As far as I am concerned we will be looking for this tool in the future again once petroleum – and the pain is based on it – has become unaffordable.

As far as I am concerned the tree marking knife, the Baumreisser, is far from dead and we will find that we will be happy to still have the skills to make them when the time comes and stocks left.

© 2011

A Handbook of Scotland's Forests – Book Review

Review by Michael Smith (Veshengro), RFA 

A Handbook of Scotland's Forests edited by Fiona Martynoga
by Reforesting Scotland
Published by Selaband, Glasgow, 12 May 2011
224 pages, Paperback, illustrated with line drawings
ISBN: 978-188735486-8
Price: £ 9.99

In 224 pages this handbook, while being concise, is remarkable comprehensive and covers about everything anyone needs to know about reforesting, and not just (in) Scotland. 

Despite the fact that the book is talking about Scotland's trees, as the title suggests, it is also similarly applicable to the rest of the British Isles (almost). 

Part one of the book deals with “Three Craft”; the what, where, why and now, including seed gathering, growing and planting and everything in between and related. 

Part two profiles the various species of trees (and shrubs) in Scotland and, as said, to a degree this and the previous part are also applicable to the rest of the UK. 

Exceptions there will be as regards to some laws as Scotland has different laws, legal provisions and legal system in comparison to England (Wales and Northern Ireland), and this also applies to land law and forest law.

A great and most valuable boot for any forester, professional and lay, and anyone interested in reforesting Scotland and other areas of Britain.

© 2011

Woodlands – Book Review

Review by Michael Smith (Veshengro), RFA

Woodlands

by Oliver Rackham

480 pages, hardback, 23.6 x 15.6 x 4.8 cm

Published by Collins as a New edition March 4, 2010)

ISBN: 978-0007315147

‘Trees are wildlife just as deer or primroses are wildlife. Each species has its own agenda and its own interactions with human activities …’

Written by one of Britain’s best-known naturalists, Woodlands offers a fascinating new insight into the trees of the British landscape that have filled us with awe and inspiration throughout the centuries.

Looking at such diverse evidence as the woods used in buildings and ships, and how woodland has been portrayed in pictures and photographs, Rackham traces British woodland through the ages, from the evolution of wildwood, through man’s effect on the landscape, modern forestry and its legacy, and recent conservation efforts and their effects.

In his lively and thoroughly engaging style, Rackham explores woodlands and their history, through names, surveys, mapping and legal documents, archeology, photographs and works of art, thus offering an utterly compelling insight into British woodlands and how they have come to shape a national obsession.

Oliver Rackham has been a great champion for real woods and against the endless postwar conifer plantations – a campaign now largely won. Here he is writing not as a conservationist, but simply to share his prodigious knowledge of woods and trees with the reader.

Rackman, as far as I can ascertain, really knows his subject as regards to woodlands and woodland management and it is refreshing to see and be able to read material such as this.

When the Woodland Trust, however, waffles in their review of the book about restoration of ancient woods and creation of new woods is vital to creating a countryside which is more sympathetic to woodland wildlife, and which delivers benefits to society I would like them to actually show me the “ancient woodlands” that they are referring to.

There are no woodlands in Britain that have never been touched by the hand of man and it is the stupidity of statements such as that that currently may lose us 1,000s of coppice trees in the West Country that are about a millennium old.

Many misguided people have caused working of those woods to stop “ because of the need to restore those to ancient woodlands” not considering the fact that those woodlands had been working coppice woods for the last two thousand years or more.

We must work the woods once again and use them as a renewable resource and not as something just to sit there.

A younger growing tree is more beneficial as carbon sequester too that is an ancient one and with proper renewal such woodlands will reproduce for millenniums to come. Time everyone, and especially the self-proclaimed experts and advocates of the “ancient woodland” began to understand that.

Leaving dead wood on the forest floor is doing no one good either. The so-called habitat piles are – in reality – nothing but bad forestry practice and lead to fire ladders, harbor diseases and the decaying wood not just releases the CO2 the tree had stored during its lifetime but also the much more dangerous greenhouse gas of methane.

Much, much better to actually make the wood into something, especially by means of woodland crafts, from the bodger to other users. Even using that wood that cannot be used for crafts and industry as firewood is better than having it rot down out there in the forest.

Far too long have we allowed our woodland workers to die a slow death. It is time that we, once again, supported them and their products and also encouraged new life into the woodlands by bringing in young people to learn the crafts and skills that, in the not too distant future will once again be as needed as they were before the Second World War.

© 2011

Investing in carbon capture and storage Nature's way

Stopping deforestation, greening agriculture better than carbon capture and storage, says UNEP Report

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

It does, does it? OMG, how new, NOT. It is mind-boggling what those scientists are capable of discovering at high cost which everyone else knew long ago.

Should it not have been obvious, without the need of spending millions on (fake) research, that reafforestation of areas and looking after our forests and woodlands on a worldwide basis, and this includes their proper management, is better than any other means of “carbon capture” and “-storage”?

Boosting investments in the conservation, rehabilitation and management of the Earth's forests, peatlands, soils and other key ecosystems could deliver significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and avoid even more being released to the atmosphere, a 2009 report by the UN Environment Program (UNEP) says.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director, said that tens of billions of dollars are being earmarked for carbon capture and storage at power stations with the CO2 to be buried underground or under the sea.

But, he said, that perhaps the international community is overlooking a tried and tested method that has been working for millennia, the biosphere and that by some estimates the Earth's living systems might be capable of sequestering more than 50 gigatones (Gt) of carbon over the coming decades with the right market signals.

In other words, what he is saying that forests and other such lands would be much better in carbon capture and -sequestration than anything else that could be conceived by man.

Now who would have thought?

This is something that foresters, including and especially professional commercial foresters, have told everyone for ages and ages but they have been looking at other methods. Why?

The answer to the rhetorical question is that natural ways are way too simple and cannot generate a huge profit for the companies involved in making and marketing the systems.

Aside from protecting and maintaining and preserving the forests, woods, peatlands and other such areas we must actively plant new forests and woodlands and manage our woodlands and forests in such a way that they are beneficial for carbon capture.

In addition to that we must make use of forest products and debris more rather than leaving thinnings out there in the woods as so-called habitat piles to rot away where they release the once captured carbon and in addition to that lots of methane.

While some habitat piles are needed indeed to encourage a greater fungi population most of what is claimed to be left “for the wildlife” constitutes nothing but bad and lazy forestry practices.

Let's get back to normality of a clean forest floor and of using the wood in a proper way, from burning it (carbon neutral) to making things from it (carbon negative), instead of using plastics all the time and just leaving the woods to fall apart.

© 2011