Interesting oak

[alexw]

Hi,

Yes the Holm oak has some amazing figuring but it is very hard and dense and difficult to cut. Personally from shifting boards around quite a lot I think it is considerably heavier, but have never weighed any. I intend to cut a trunk that I have as the rays are amazing in the boards, and just keep changing the blades. similarly the hornbeam is very dense, with lovely creamy white wood and some interesting brown flecks and waves in it. As Douglas says the challenge will be to dry it!

 

[yetloh]

There is a huge Holm oak in the Bishop's Palace Garden in Chichester where the city wall abuts Avenue de Chartres at its western end. It's a magnificent sight and it always amazes me that it hasn't gone over and taken the wall with it, given that the base of its trunk must be 15 feet above road level.

So far as rarity is concerned, I think it depends what you mean. As a tree, I think it is quite common but it will be rare as timber because it is not grown commercially. For the same reason, virtually all the maple commercially available here is imported from north america. We have our own native maple - the field maple (Acer campestre) which is a common tree but it is not reliably available commercially because supply is dependent on a large tree becoming available for conversion. The other obstacle with species like these is that they are less likely found in forests or woodland than in hedges or gardens so will have shorter trunks and be more likely to have nails in them - the reason many mills are reluctant to convert garden trees.

Jim