Viewpoints
Covenants prioritizing domestic
processing of
wood logged from public to private ownership needed...
by Mike Sallee
April 29, 2005
Friday
This is a piece of yellow cedar butt wood about 6 feet long and
3 feet in diameter,(for scale the hunting rifle is about 44 inches
long), left in the woods by recent helicopter loggers on Gravina.
It is pieces exactly like this, though not from Gravina, from
which I milled the rough stock that produced the exquisite clear
blond boards currently being made into bentwood boxes by a class
at Totem Heritage Center here in Ketchikan. Yellow cedar commonly
contains defects such as ring rot, ring shake, bark seams and
cat faces. From around and between these defects can be extracted
the pieces of clear sound wood prized by carvers, boat builders
and other wood workers.
Piece of yellow cedar
butt wood
Without covenants prioritizing domestic processing of wood logged
from lands converted from public to private ownership, for example
Mental Health land and the land proposed to be transferred from
Division of Natural Resources to the University of Alaska, most
of local top grades of cedar, spruce and hemlock and the processing
jobs and revenue that wood could generate will be shipped overseas.
Mike Sallee
Ketchikan, AK - USA
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