Monday, and the living ain't easy. 3 parts

Google says pallets for the source...

but not much else.

Sorry, no.

Hints

I don't normally continue a question through the next day but this trivia was noodled out because it was interesting, wood related, and awkward to Google. For those wishing another go you can use these hints.

1. Think our left coast before the Spanish even.

2. Think a kind of lumber famous in the mid east used to build King Solomon's temple. Most remembered in a country known throughout the Mediterranean as a source for this wood well prior to 1000B.C. and before the land was practically denuded.

3. This was mostly a religious practice, to a lesser extent political and conservation. Still practiced today where the people and raw materials are available.

Re: Hints

1. Left Coast before Spanish? Indigenous people, Chinese or Japanese(I don't really think there is much evidence of them)? The Russians were after the star of Spainish exploration, at least I'm pretty sure they were.

2.Think a kind of lumber famous in the mid east used to build King Solomon's temple? Cedar, but Western Red, not Juniper, (I think that Juniper is really closer to Cedars of Lebanon). Myrtlewood grows on the "left" coast and in the Middle East, but in Solomon's temple? Hmmm

3. A religious practice, to a lesser extent political and conservation.

Man, how to put these clues all together.

All I can come up with is... The Northwest Coast Natives could build their plank houses out of trees that fell down that they could beg from the forest. Or Inland, they could build Wikiups from deadfall branches, wood that they begged.

Boy what a strech for either of those.

glc

Re: You're on the right wavelength

Gary,

1. Correct! Let's agree to indigenous natives of the North West Coast. Don't get tricked by "modern" borders. Since few know them I'll give you the name. The native Kwakiutl tribe of Washington and Canada’s Vancouver Island.

2. Correct! Cedar is the tree. Not the same species as the Cedars of Lebanon, but the cedar of the Northwest coast. Abies Procera--Noble Fir. The tree is known to grow to 250 feet and dead straight.

3. Additional thoughts required.

I'm Puzzled???

Noble Fir a Cedar?? Hmmm. I know the dwellings most of the North Coast tribes used were plank style long houses, I always thought they used Western Red Cedar. I got it. I had to do another search to confirm some old memory traces. I wouldn't want anyone to do that to me!!! Does skined alive come close?

glc

You got it, see below (longish)

Of course, Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata) not Noble Fir. I zigged when I meant to zag. I mis-read notes (owing to my error don't look for a WoodCentral trivia question on the Noble fir anytime soon). I knew the (fir) latin name didn't look right when I wrote it but I let it through without checking. As to skined alive, I choose to think of it more as a skin graft from one place to another.

In the American Northwest the native Kwakiutl tribe of Washington and Canada’s Vancouver Island take planks from a tree without killing it. They call it begging wood. On a single side of a straight grained tree trunk (trees there are five feet or more in diameter—and there are a lot of trees) they make a notch about 3 feet above ground, four to six inches in, then further up (mostly about 20 feet, but whatever they need) another notch. As the top notch is widened, yew wood wedges are pounded into the gap and down the sides. When that is done a lever is worked from the upper split to the bottom, freeing a plank without killing the tree. By this method, cedar plank dwellings were/are built. The planks were split and adzed to proper thickness of about 3” for floors and 1 inch for dwelling sides and were kept as wide as possible 20-36” being a good width. Some beams could be fashioned this way but most were whole logs as much as fifty feet long and two feet in diameter (some of them fir). Tree recovery for planks taken in this fashion was immediate, and to the best of my information, a different portion of the tree could be used for he same purpose in ten years and the original scar grown over in fifty. The begging was religious in that it respected and honored the tree and did not kill it. Begging wood was also political in that it demonstrated that the tribe intended to be there forever and it was wisest not to destroy for future generations what was there and important to the way they lived; and environmental in that it took care of their needs, but didn’t destroy the area--the condition of the forest was unchanged. In addition to planks, the bark was used for tanning and herbal remedies and the stringy inner bark was used for baskets and lashings.

Much of the above information was from Native American Architecture, Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton, 1989 Oxford Press, pp 244-257

Gary, just curious

What part of the country / continent are you from, if you don't mind saying. If you have mentioned it before I've missed it or more likely forgotten.

gary camp

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