Wood properties and drying characteristics of Korean sawtooth oak ( Quercus acutissima Carruth.)

  • PDF / 1,446,861 Bytes
  • 7 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
  • 22 Downloads / 197 Views

DOWNLOAD

REPORT


ORIGINAL

Wood properties and drying characteristics of Korean sawtooth oak (Quercus acutissima Carruth.) Yeonjung Han1   · Yoon‑Seong Chang1 Received: 15 September 2019 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract The objective of this study was to assess the wood properties and drying characteristics of sawtooth oak (Quercus acutissima Carruth.) to determine the potential for the extension of its use in South Korea. The annual rings, latewood ratio, dimensions of the vessels, density, and shrinkage of specimens manufactured from five sawtooth oak trees were measured and compared by age class. The drying rate and drying defects of sawtooth oak boards were also investigated during the kiln-drying process. To evaluate its processing performance, the roughness of the radial and tangential sections of sawtooth oak wood after sawing and planing was measured using a roughness tester and the texture of the surface of each section was observed using a stereoscopic microscope. It is expected that, based on the fundamental properties of Korean sawtooth oak wood presented in this study, the use of this Korean oak species could be extended.

1 Introduction The forest area (6,383,441 ha) in South Korea occupies 64% of the total land area (10,036,372 ha), with a growing stock of 971,599,553 m3 in 2017 (Korea Forest Service 2018). The proportion of broad-leaved and mixed forests is 49% and 12%, respectively, and the forest area and growing stock of Quercus species are 975,181 ha and 133,606,365 m3, respectively. Quercus species are widespread across Asia, Europe, North America and Africa (Fang et al. 2011). These species are used for a number of different purposes including timber, charcoal, bed logs for the cultivation of mushrooms, raw material for tannin extracts, and as bioenergy source (Oshima et al. 1997; Okamura et al. 2001; Lee et al. 2008). Sawtooth oak (Quercus acutissima Carruth.) broadly inhabits the deciduous broad-leaved forest zone of eastern Asia as a frontier species in deforested areas (Jung and Tamai 2012). The main Quercus species in Korea is the white oak species including sawtooth oak, oriental white oak, Korean oak, Mongolian oak, konara oak, and oriental cork oak. Six species have similar anatomical properties, such as pores and pits, with slightly different dimension of vessel elements * Yeonjung Han [email protected] 1



Department of Forest Products, National Institute of Forest Science, Seoul 02455, Republic of Korea

(Eom 2015). Sawtooth oak is one of the most abundant hardwood species (Kim 2002) and is mainly found at altitudes below 600 m, growing straight to a height of 20–30 m. In Korea, Quercus species are generally used for lowgrade applications such as bed logs for mushroom, tool handles, and charcoal, while those Quercus species used as timber and lumber are generally imported. In 2011, 8000 m3 and 4400 m3 of oak wood was imported in the form of lumber and logs, respectively. Because the Quercus species do not offer the continuous supply of high-quality wood requi