Glorious past, great prospects

The original magazine is understandably a tad dog-eared, but Buckinghamshire New University, which holds the TTJ archive, very generously commissioned an antiquarian publication specialist to reproduce and digitally enhance the pages. So it is very legible. It is also a fascinating read.

Particularly intriguing are the technical articles and news briefs on new patents.

One piece looks at the merits of iron versus wooden ships. Underlining its impartiality, it acknowledges the advance the former represent in many respects, but points out that they sink 20 times faster!

Among latest patents is one for "an improved machine for splitting wood and cutting it into lengths", another for "improvements in the manufacture of wooden boxes and the machinery employed therein".

You wonder just how wide-eyed our original readers would be at the technical progress made by the industry since. Timber may not be able to compete with metal in large-scale shipbuilding (yet), but advances in wood modification enable it to compete more effectively with man-made materials in versatility and durability.

Engineered wood products have been around for much of TTJ's history, but 1873 subscribers would be staggered at today's 100m-plus glulam beams and 10-storey cross-laminated timber (CLT) buildings. And how would they react to their use, as pioneered by Metsä Wood, in conjunction with Building Information Modelling software?

Last week's Ligna wood machinery show (p11 and featured in the next TTJ) would also be like stepping onto another planet. For the Victorians' box-making and wood-cutting and splitting machines, read the Leitz HeliCut aluminium cutterhead for tear-free slicing through CLT and glulam, Weinig's Powermat 2400 3D moulder using floating spindles to create any surface effect, or Striebig's 4D single-operator optimising vertical beam saw, with auto workpiece handling.

But while TTJ's first edition underlines seismic change since 1873, there's also underlying continuity. It's obviously developed tremendously since, but what links the modern UK timber industry to its Victorian predecessor is an appreciation of timber's value as more than a hugely versatile construction and manufacturing material with both aesthetic and performance appeal. Of course, far more is known about it now, but timber's and forestry's environmental benefits were already appreciated - or as TTJ stated in 1873 "the powerful influence forests of a country exercise over its climate is so generally recognised it is unnecessary to dilate upon it".

The fact that commercial management provides financial incentive to preserve forests was also understood - with a connection drawn between the switch to iron ships and deterioration of UK forests, which no longer needed to be husbanded for naval use.

So running the ancient and modern TTJs side by side reflects an industry committed to technical advance to make the best and most of its resource, and one which has long appreciated that timber and its effective use have an inherent worth to the wider world.

Sounds like cause for self-congratulation and celebration for the industry as a whole. And the recipe for another 140 years of TTJ.