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Exclusive hardwood may be illegally harvested

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Re: Exclusive hardwood may be illegally harvested

#61

Post by bhandziuk »

thunfischbrot wrote: post #53
bluGill wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardwood is always covered in a plastic finish. Yes it feels different, but it is still plastic.

That's not correct. While many people choose polyurethane finished wood since it is less likely to stain from liquids, oils and varnishes are popular as well. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_flooring#Finishing,_buffi...

Polyurethane is one type of varnish so if you're going to contrast it you'll have to be more specific (phenolic resin or alkyd resin)

Usually oils would be combined with some other varnish, especially on a floor, because they offer nearly zero abrasion or water resistance. You'd think oil finishes like boiled linseed oil or tung oil would offer some water protection because of the oil but they don't. Better than wax or nothing but much worse than varnishes.

This is a table from a book on my shelf by Bob Flexner on the subject, Understanding Wood Finishes. It's a good reference https://imgur.com/a/TzacsLs

Re: Exclusive hardwood may be illegally harvested

#62

Post by lovich »

thunfischbrot wrote: post #55
simonsarris wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> look nearly indistinguishable maybe I'm top 1% neurotic about these things but I can tell from Zillow images alone. And definitely by feel of walking on them and the distinct noise they make. There's no comparison. I seriously doubt they are indistinguishable for most people, but I could be very wrong, especially since so many people go for them.

Most people just don't care or never knew the difference. Like keming, once you notice it, you will likely notice for the rest of your life.

That was physically painful to read, good example

Re: Exclusive hardwood may be illegally harvested

#63

Post by hanniabu »

29athrowaway wrote: post #15
marricks wrote: post #10

It’s why you gotta burn ivory. When something is a luxury item for the wealthy rules don’t really matter you have to destroy the market.

Or explain people that ivory won't treat their ED. Or spread the rumor that ivory makes you flaccid.

With misinformation these days people will just think the government is trying to keep them from becoming healthy

Re: Exclusive hardwood may be illegally harvested

#64

Post by hcurtiss »

LoganDark wrote: post #59
hcurtiss wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may be an anomaly, but we have 13.5mm laminates[1] which I'd say were relatively high grade when we put them in. The product we used didn't come with stair kits so we had to do the staircase with oak stained to match. We have two full-size golden retrievers. Eight years later, the laminates look like the day we installed them -- literally. The oak is all scratched up and will take a lot of work to refinish. [2] I…

Does this page ever actually load?

LOL - it did for me. It's also here, though it looks like it's 14mm now.

https://www.floorcity.com/collections/calypso-laminate-floor...

Re: Exclusive hardwood may be illegally harvested

#65

Post by epx »

hedora wrote: post #26
civilitty wrote: post #2

In my (albeit limited) experience, if you can’t get some sort of provenance documentation for exotic hardwoods from the lumberyard, it’s almost guaranteed to be unsustainably harvested, mostly outright illegally. Unfortunately it seems that most lumberyards open to the public and contractors are full of such wood because the legit stuff is even more expensive and sold mostly to high end furniture manufacturers and sp…

I’ve never seen a lumberyard that doesn’t have sustainability certifications. Anyway, much of the illegal harvesting is due to Brazil’s right wing government actively encouraging people to burn the amazon to the ground. Though it would be hypocritical, we should treat that as an act of war. The greenhouse effect of that one action is going to cause trillions of damage to coastal cities alone.

s/right wing/any wing/. Look up who built Belo Monte.

Re: Exclusive hardwood may be illegally harvested

#66

Post by duxup »

abakker wrote: post #39
bastardoperator wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue there is zero point in using real hardwood on floors these days given vinyl planks are way cheaper, way more durable, and look nearly indistinguishable from real thing.

Hardwood floors can be re-sanded and refinished many times over, generating no waste. Vinyl floors get scratched and then thrown away. Wood is renewable, vinyl comes from oil wells. I'm not certain this is actually logical.

> Vinyl floors get scratched

That's pretty hard to do on modern vinyl floors. Vinyl gets a bad rap because there were a lot of low end bad products, now there are some amazingly durable options.

Re: Exclusive hardwood may be illegally harvested

#67

Post by obscurette »

abakker wrote: post #39
bastardoperator wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue there is zero point in using real hardwood on floors these days given vinyl planks are way cheaper, way more durable, and look nearly indistinguishable from real thing.

Hardwood floors can be re-sanded and refinished many times over, generating no waste. Vinyl floors get scratched and then thrown away. Wood is renewable, vinyl comes from oil wells. I'm not certain this is actually logical.

My house has original oak floors installed 85 years ago and there is still enough material left for 2-3 sandings.

Re: Exclusive hardwood may be illegally harvested

#68

Post by Loughla »

arp242 wrote: post #22
Loughla wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about black locust rot resistance. That's pretty heavily informed on when you harvest it. If you harvest in the spring, it won't last five years. It's only good if harvested in the dead of winter when there is no sap. Also, it doesn't grow large, often because it's so susceptible to disease. So there's that, too.

Don't harvest in the spring then? Wikipedia says "It is very resistant to rot" and "In the Netherlands some other parts of Europe, black locust is one of the most rot-resistant local trees".

I mean, that's fine, but only harvesting for a short portion of the year (during hard freeze after sap is out) severely limits the market and therefore increases cost.

That has to be part of the issue, right?

Re: Exclusive hardwood may be illegally harvested

#69

Post by civilitty »

Aurornis wrote: post #58
civilitty wrote: post #2

In my (albeit limited) experience, if you can’t get some sort of provenance documentation for exotic hardwoods from the lumberyard, it’s almost guaranteed to be unsustainably harvested, mostly outright illegally. Unfortunately it seems that most lumberyards open to the public and contractors are full of such wood because the legit stuff is even more expensive and sold mostly to high end furniture manufacturers and sp…

> In my (albeit limited) experience, if you can’t get some sort of provenance documentation for exotic hardwoods from the lumberyard, it’s almost guaranteed to be unsustainably harvested, mostly outright illegally. If you can't get any provenance documentation, how are you assuming it's harvested illegally?

Funnily enough, a lot of the illegally harvested wood comes with great provenance information, if not official documentation. Unscrupulous manufacturers need to know where to reliably source it and corruption where these trees are harvested is rampant so they don't even need to hide it. I assume so because there's a significant price difference between those operations and legitimate sustainable ones when provenance is available.

However I think the exotic wood that makes it to the average lumberyard comes almost exclusively from opportunistic small logging operations that stumble upon on groves of trees and cut them down and ship them out as fast as possible, oftentimes under the noses of the land owners (the state, natural reserves, etc.).

Re: Exclusive hardwood may be illegally harvested

#70

Post by LeifCarrotson »

Loughla wrote: post #68
arp242 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't harvest in the spring then? Wikipedia says "It is very resistant to rot" and "In the Netherlands some other parts of Europe, black locust is one of the most rot-resistant local trees".

I mean, that's fine, but only harvesting for a short portion of the year (during hard freeze after sap is out) severely limits the market and therefore increases cost. That has to be part of the issue, right?

The bottleneck is growing the wood, not cutting it. Modern forestry equipment is insanely fast.

Most agricultural crops have a very short seasonal window in which they can be harvested, but corn is not expensive because we only get one harvest per year, lumber is an anomaly in that respect.

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