CHESTNUT Blighted Wood Good for All Timber Uses

The chestnut blight has robbed northeastern forests and wood lots of one of our best all-around timber trees, and is sweeping relentlessly southward through all the Atlantic States. In a comparatively few years chestnut will be gone entirely from our eastern woodlands. What can the woods owner with chestnut trees a part of his timber crop do about it?

FIG. 43.—Getting the good of a doomed species. This fence, constructed in part of blight-killed chestnut, has for 14 years given testimony to the soundness of this wood

The living tree can not be saved, but the valuable wood can. The blight itself does not affect in any way the strength of chestnut wood. If the wood is harvested before fungi and worms attack the dead tree, the timber is as good for all purposes as any ever cut from a thrifty, unblighted chestnut. However, if this timber, living or dead, is to be saved, it must all be cut and used in the next 15 years.

Even where the blight has not yet entered, the chestnut in farm woods and larger tracts should be disposed of at the first opportunity, regardless of whether the trees are at full maturity. Where, the blight has entered, some knowledge is needed of the uses to which the wood may be put, according to the degree that the wood has been attacked by wood-destroying organisms. These uses may be summarized as follows:
   Sound wood, trees two years dead or less.—Use for round products, as poles, piling, construction timbers, mine timbers, highway and railway round fence posts, hewed ties, and all the uses that fellow where sapwood is not objectionable.
   Sapwood decayed but heartwood sound, trees dead two to four years.—Use for sawed products, as box and yard lumber, mill products, coffins and caskets, furniture, core stock (veneer), cabinet work, woodenware novelties, and slack cooperage. Where lumber is to be kiln dried, there is no fear that decay will spread, for this process sterilizes the lumber effectually.
   Sapwood decayed and heartwood checked but fairly sound, trees four to six years dead. Tannin wood, pulp wood, farm fence posts.  lumber or timbers for temporary construction. Wood less sound can be used for fuel. This class of material should never be supplied for the purposes listed in the preceding paragraphs. Where this has been done it has in some regions brought about an embargo on all chestnut.

Chestnut constitutes about 25 per cent of the woods and forests on 33,000,000 acres in the Appalachian region, and represents in merchantable timber fifteen to twenty billion board feet. To utilize this timber before it is destroyed is a national obligation. To delay doing so will in many instances result in a considerable loss to the owner.