Cob: coppiced wood

[Sojourner]

DoNegard at aol.com wrote:
> 
> << coppiced wood >>
> 
> The word coppiced is not in my American Heritage dictionary.  Is there an
> alternate spelling?  Is there a simpler term that everyone would recognize?
> 
> It probably appeared earlier, but would you mind giving a formal definitiion
> for "coppiced".
> 
> Thanks, Don

Coppicing is the practice of growing certain woods (willow is the one
that springs to mind) in such a way as to be able to continually harvest
the plant without killing it.  Some woods will send out multiple shoots
from the rootstock - you harvest these when they get sorta good sized
and leave the rest.  I believe it takes about 5 years to get the plant
to the point where you can do this on a yearly basis.

You get smaller pieces of wood, so its not a practice much used in this
country, where the American Way seems to require huge logs of oak that
must be cut with a chainsaw and then split the Manly Way (<VBG>, that
usually means by someone else with a hydraulic log splitter these days).

Coppiced wood burns hotter and faster than split logs of oak, but most
people don't get to burn oak anymore anyway.

It is an excellent way to feed a masonry stove, but not so great for
your typical woodstove, especially the sheet metal ones because if you
don't keep it constantly fed the rapid heating followed by a cooldown
and then cycling like that will cause warping.

There are pros and cons to coppicing over cutting logs.  It's still done
in parts of Europe and Britain.

Holly ;-D