Influence of Juvenile Wood on Bending Properties of Softwood Lumber

Starting from the questions of the appropriateness of the term juvenile wood and the uncertainty in predicting its location in a given stem of a typical Northern American conifer, some predictions are made concerning the impact of the proportion of juvenile wood on bending properties of softwood lumber. Results of a recent study which looks at the relative merits of proportion of juvenile wood and position in the tree stem as alternative indicators of bending strength of plantation White spruce lumber are used to expand the discussion. This work is related to changing harvesting and log transportation practices to those which make it possible to cut and segregate logs from tree stems in the relatively controlled environment of a sawmill rather than in the forest