New composites, nanocellulose coatings, liquid fuels are on the horizon By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future Writer Dwane Hutto is obviously enjoying himself. He has just described a fairly complicated chemical process that started with ground up trees and produced a dark liquid in a vial that he holds high so everyone can see…
These parcels aren’t as well known as the state’s parks, but that’s changing By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future Writer When most people think about public lands in Maine, they think state parks like Mt. Blue or Two Lights. Or maybe Baxter State Park and Katahdin. Acadia National Park, maybe. But there is a…
By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future writer You’re driving down a Maine highway, following a logging truck that’s teetering and swaying with a load of logs, belching diesel fumes, and, because your cell phone fell down between the seats, you have time to speculate about where those logs might be going. …
By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future Writer Watching the edger-optimizer at Robbins Lumber Co.’s pine mill in Searsmont induces, first, a gee whiz reaction at the sheer, well, efficiency of it, followed by a sort of hypnotic state. Whoosh . . . a board or boards shoots out of the center, the guides shifting…
By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future Writer As a young boy in the 1940s Richard Nadeau frequently spent time in the remote lumber camps of northwestern Maine with his dad, who worked as a crew boss. While the men cut and limbed trees, Nadeau saw the deep woods, the towering spruce and fir, the…
By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future Writer In the mid-’60s Eric Sloane wrote “A Reverence for Wood,” a tribute to the importance of wood in early American life. It’s lovingly illustrated with Sloane’s skillfully detailed pen and ink sketches of everything wood: burl mallets, basswood berry boxes, up-and-down sawmills, timber frame barns. Butter churns…
Fresh from the Woods Producing energy from woodland ‘biomass’ could — over time — add less greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than burning fossil fuels, according to a report from the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences. (Photo by Andrew Kekacs) New Study Outlines Costs, Benefits Of Using Wood to Generate Power By Andrew Kekacs The…
