The Forestry Forum

(PHOTOS) Wood You Like to Tour the Forest Products Laboratory? (http://sm1.multiview.com/t/gcH1AAbbaBPWP-BrQNPWtDIF7EQzaK05SKJZoaaaaK05BRUS2Q9aa?s=gnsdtsfq802~2531gpsnZjk.dnn~amp;c=gnsdtsfq802~2531gpsnZjk.dnn~amp;k=m~amp;w=)
The Cap Times, Oct. 6, 2022
At the west end of the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, just east of University Hospital, sits the home base for a 112-year-old federal effort to use the nation's forests more efficiently. Founded in 1910, the Forest Products Lab first occupied two buildings closer to the center of campus.

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The Digital Forester

Note: Member @Beenthere may say more about this or answer any questions.

I can relate to the first photo in the article. Not that I have much knowledge about the pixie dust, but back over 30 years ago I suggested wood in some form or compound would be useful in concrete. This was in our small Forest Products Lab at our University. Come to find out the idea was not new even back then. I believe our textbook was something similar to the Wood Handbook, but not the same. It wasn't actually a required text because much of the course was forest products in use not until a later course did we get wood technology looking at properties of wood, identification and cell walls and such. We used the Text Book of Wood Technology. Much of the data came out of the WI Forest Products Lab. A pioneering facility for sure.

I found this short video describing the Xylotron mentioned in the article;
Home (xylotron.org) (https://www.xylotron.org/)
and down the rabbit hole;
Xylotron Lab Notes (usda.gov) (https://www.fpl.fs.usda.gov/labnotes/?tag=xylotron) {I met one of the Labs' librarians at some event and mentioned that if they saw someone prowling the stacks at night, it was probably me squirrel hunting  :D)
ENG-XyloTron-introduction.pdf (tefso.org) (https://tefso.org/download/Other-en/ENG-XyloTron-introduction.pdf)

My first copy of the Wood Handbook was bought with lawn mower money in my teens but my favorite is my wife's Dad's old copy that sits on the shelf. I read the bylines in publications over my span and tried hard to remember and put it on its own shelf in my mind if something came from the USFPL. That was straight from them that were tearing bunches of stuff up :D.