That’s not an accidental turn of phrase: as an agroforestry extension specialist for the Cornell Small Farm Program at Cornell University in New York, Steve primarily interacts with existing or would-be farmers. Some of them own existing woodlots. Some are interested in planting trees in conjunction with raising animals or crops. Almost all of them are interested in finding ways to increase their income – and that just might be where the relevance to woodworkers comes in.

For example, Steve noted that, although maple syrup producers obviously have a vested interest in keeping their trees alive to continue producing the maple sap, eventually all trees’ lives come to an end. In this case, portions of that wood could be what’s known as taphole maple: a spalted design created when the tree receives the puncture wound from the tapping, as well as remnant holes in the wood from the taps themselves. Many farmers, however, don’t realize there’s a value in that wood, Steve said. “The perception is, ‘The only value is wood that’s clear, clean, veneer quality.’”

There’s potential, Steve noted, “for farmers to expand more of what they cultivate for the wood products world.”

So, what is agroforestry? And silvopasture (other than the title of Steve’s new book, Silvopasture, ISBN 1603587314, published by Chelsea Green)?

Agroforestry, Steve said, is the name for the practice “that has been really how humans have existed on most of the earth for the longest time, where the production of food or medicine or other products that we associate with farming is mixed with forestry.” Those farming products might be tree saps or syrups; fruits and nuts; mushrooms; or medicinals. Ginseng, for example, would be an agroforestry crop grown in a certain type of forest.

The type of agroforestry in which crops are grown under the canopy of an existing forest is called “forest farming” (the subject of Steve’s previous book, Farming the Woods, ISBN 1603585079 coauthored with Ken Mudge and also published by Chelsea Green). Agroforestry can also include practices like alley cropping, in which trees are planted in rows – straight or contoured – with farmed crops planted between the rows, which can then act as windbreaks.

For example, the University of Missouri’s agroforestry efforts include encouraging the planting of black walnut trees, mingled with corn crops. Farmers maintain their corn yield for a time, with windbreak protection from the trees. Eventually, more mature trees will shade out the corn – at which time the black walnuts will be producing nuts which can also serve as a cash crop.

Silvopasture, in turn, refers to the practice of integrating forestry management with grazing animals.

“I think the oldest silvopasture system that we have documentation of is the dehesa [Spanish] or montado [Portugese],” some of which have been around for 400 or 500 years, Steve said. In these savannah-like systems, the Portugese tend to harvest cork from cork oak, while in Spain, Steve said, the trees are most often cultivated for their acorns, which are then fed to pigs to produce a high-value pork product.

In his own work in the U.S., Steve works both with farmers who own an existing woodlot and want to get into silvopasture, and with farmers who are planting trees in the pasture and can therefore select what species they favor. “When we do good managed grazing mixed with tree planting, that actually puts the most carbon in the soil,” Steve said. “It is really ranked among the best farming practices in terms of its impact on the climate.” Plus, he noted, as farmers choose their tree species, “That has the potential to provide good woodworking material.”

Right now, there is probably some good wood sitting on the ground from farmers who entered silvopasture with an existing timber stand on their property. “In most cases, you really have to thin the woodlot pretty heavily, like to 50 percent canopy cover, because you need to get enough light in there to establish some forage for the grazing animals,” Steve explained. “What that results in is a lot of thinning of lower canopy species, because we’re most just focused on trying to open up the understory.”

The wood that comes out of such projects is often not large enough to go to a mill to be converted into standardized lumber. Sometimes it gets taken to a nearby biomass plant to be used for fuel; sometimes someone buys some for firewood. “Maybe the farmer grabs a little bit of firewood for themselves, but there’s a lot of wood that just ends up being dragged off into the corner and kind of piled up because it doesn’t have an economic return and the so the farmer or the logger, whoever’s doing the work, doesn’t think it’s worth dragging out of the woods,” Steve said.

Connecting with woodworkers, he noted, “would be a huge benefit to being able to actually help us create silvopasture, because the trick is, how do we get all that thinning done in a way that it also pays for the labor or the machinery to do the work?”

When creating silvopasture through tree plantings, Steve said, “Almost any species can be used. It kind of depends on what the goals of the farm area. We’re really interested in planting a lot of trees mostly to shade the animals and also as a food source for them.”

Generally, this does mean farmers pursuing silvopasture are interested in faster-growing tree species as fodder for their cows, sheep and, sometimes, goats. Goats are more likely to eat woody vegetation, stripping bark, while sheep and cows “tend to be more into the leaves,” Steve said. Faster-growing trees are also an advantage because “we do have to keep the animals off of them for some given amount of time so that the tree can sort of establish itself and not succumb to, basically, getting beat up,” Steve said – noting that cattle, due to their weight, “just run things over.”

Some of Steve’s favorite tree species for silvopasture include black locust, poplar, mulberry, willow and basswood. “We’ve had locusts on the farm that, after three or four years, you can graze again,” he said – while noting that the timeframe for regrazing with a black walnut silvopasture, for example, might be 15 years.

Black walnut can, however, be used in silvopasture: most pasture grasses are tolerant of the toxins the tree releases, Steve said, and the toxicity doesn’t affect the animals. And black locust, on the other hand, does have a woodworking interest as well: it’s popular in the Northeast, Steve said, as wood for constructing rot-resistant posts.

He also made sure to mention a very old practice of silvopasture that has advantages both to the farmer and, potentially, to the woodworker. The practice of pollarding, he said, “is where you cut the tree at browse height, so like five or six feet off the ground, and allow the tree to resprout and regrow multiple shoots, and then you can actually harvest those shoots for the animals. You can actually store them just like hay.

“But what’s really cool about that is, to develop a really good pollard system, what you do is, the farmer manages the tree to create a burl on top of it. This is something that works for the farm, but eventually that burl could actually be harvested, which I know is another kind of woodworking interest for folks. That is a way to actually produce that kind of material and mix it in with a grazing system.”

Interested in learning more about agroforestry and/or silvopasture? It’s a relatively young effort in the U.S., Steve said, so while most states’ university extension offices might have some familiarity with the topic, they might not have a lot of resources. “There’s a lot more to learn and think about as we kind of adapt it to different regions,” he said. Some resources are available through Cornell’s Small Farm Program.

“The potential is there; there’s lots of opportunities,” Steve said. “Woodworkers should be encouraged to connect with farmers and folks practicing agroforestry because the demand that they create for the products they’re interested in could really help economically allow us to do more of this, and I think that that benefits everybody in the long term.”

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Inside, Bosch outfits it with an EC Brushless motor that spins bits at 13,000 rpm while also delivering long runtime. Constant speed circuitry monitors and maintains cutting speed under load, and restart protection helps prevent accidental startup when switching batteries. Bosch reports that the tool will cut 23 lineal ft. of roundover profile per battery amp hour (Ah). An easy-change spindle lock provides fast macro-depth adjustment, and the tool’s fine-depth adjustment moves the bit just 0.04 in. per revolution of the dial. A lock system ensures that the depth adjustment won’t change during use.

Key safety features include a finger barrier to help prevent contact with the bit and a detection sensor that stops the motor if the tool is dropped.

A 1/4-in. self-releasing collet chuck and forged collet wrench are included. Bosch’s GKF12V-25 12V Max Palm Edge Router is available now and sells for $149.

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With an expanding number of options, DEWALT’s ToughSystem® storage system is mobile and modular, allowing users to quickly and easily change the storage combination to best suit the task. A variety of modules — from toolboxes to organizers, totes and a jobsite radio — are also designed for high-impact protection.

The ToughSystem Cooler (model DWST08404) sells for $149.99 and comes with a limited lifetime warranty.

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Tim Inman: Downside? Not that I know of, except this: box jointing is notoriously tedious and touchy. If your multi-cut system creeps out of spec just a little, the joints won’t fit right. If you are stack cutting them, then you have a lot of joints that don’t fit right. Also, some “box” joints are used to actually make crude boxes like beehive frames, etc. Other box joints are used to make really nice boxes. The fit and finish need to match the use.

Chris Marshall: That’s a clever way to speed up the process, Henry! Aside from Tim’s comment, the only other concern I would have is that on really large workpieces (like those shown in the photo above), it might be a bit harder to control a stack of two against the box joint jig’s fence. But, the pin on the jig should minimize that problem as soon as the two parts are engaged over it, and clamping the parts together to act as one would also help. Otherwise, I don’t see a downside, either. I’m going to try it the next time I’m making box joints for a project. Thanks for sharing the idea.

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– David Mack

See the Gallery Below:

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“I am an avid woodworker and have the same experience of using Arbortech tools. I spend the winter in Florida, away from my workshop, so being able to do the carving allows me to keep woodworking. Hurricane Irma blew down some carrotwood trees, so I have been using that to do carving.” – Bruce Baker

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Why not just let the blank dry and turn a bowl from it once dry? This has to do with wood’s dynamic limit: how much it will bend before failure (checking) occurs. Every material has an amount it can bend before breaking. With most materials, a thinner section can bend farther before reaching the dynamic limit — and a wall thickness 10% of the diameter is generally below that limit.

Important to this discussion is that wood only shrinks about 0.1% along the grain. However, it shrinks 4.39% from the center of the log to the outside (the radial shrinkage). The same log also shrinks 7.95% in circumference (the tangential shrinkage). The specific numbers are an average of all species worldwide, but the point is that the average log loses circumference at about twice the rate it loses diameter. This means that circular stress is going to build around each annular ring. Takeaway: to reduce checking, it’s important not to have a complete annular ring in any blank you gather.

Also, as your roughed-out bowl is sitting on a shelf drying for three months, the end grain will lose water faster than the face grain areas. This causes faster shrinkage in the end grain, making checking likely.

Wrapping a freshly turned green bowl in sheets of newspaper or putting it in a paper grocery bag can create a sufficient vapor barrier to allow face grain to dry at about the same rate as the end grain. Some turners also paint the freshly turned blank with wax-based wood sealers used by the forestry industry. (Anchorseal® and Sealtite are two popular brands.) This will cause uniform drying, but it adds a month or two to the drying time.

Speaking of time, many turners want to reduce that three-month drying period. With that in mind, I’ll take a look at methods that either speed up drying or improve the end results.

(Take note, though: while practicing the science related to wood drying will greatly increase the probability of good results, in real world practice, you will sometimes get a failure even from theclearest of woods coated with wax. At other times, a funky piece of wood thrown in the corner with no paper or wax will dry just fine. That’s just the way things go …)

Method 1 — Detergent:

In this process, you soak rough-turned bowls in a simple solution of one-sixth concentrated dishwashing liquid, such as Dawn® or Joy® (NOT automatic dishwasher detergent). Chemically, detergents are surfactants, substances that reduce the surface tension of a liquid.

You can get wonderful results from soaking your bowl overnight, but three days is the optimum time. After soaking, you have two options. The first option is to finish turn the bowl to a thinner wall immediately. The surfactant makes the final turning go much easier, with much less tearout in the end grain by the tools. There is also an improvement in sanding, with less clogging of the sandpaper. The detergent seems to further reduce checking in clear wood.

The second option is to allow the rough-turned blank to air dry before re-turning. Drying time is reduced and checking becomes nonexistent — even without wrapping in paper or waxing. It seems the surfactant is accelerating the water transfer across the cell membranes.

Despite Internet claims of a reduction in warping during drying, there is no change in the ultimate warping of the wood. There is, however, some debate on the process changing the color of the wood. I have personally found no change in color or how the wood accepts a final oil finish, but I have received reports of various lacquer finishes reacting badly to the detergent.

Method 2 — Microwaving:

This method involves placing your rough-turned bowl in a plastic bag and microwaving it on a defrost cycle until you start to see steam. The blank is removed from the bag and allowed to cool to room temperature. The process is repeated again and again, until you no longer see steam and there is the predictable warping, or until the weight of your wood has dropped by one-third.

Even with the most careful finding of the right power setting on your microwave, allowing complete cooling out of the bag and reversing the bag to dry the moisture out of it, you may get some checking.

I’ve used this process when I absolutely had to get a bowl out the door but have rued the procrastination that caused me to have to resort to it. (Plus, it takes an entire evening, so pick one when you don’t care about watching the big game.) Overall, I consider it an emergency triage method only!

Method 3 — Desiccant:

Desiccant pellets are used widely in industry to dry items quickly and to keep them dry during shipment. The pellets come in a plastic bag sealed in a screw-top pail with a rubber gasket which keeps them dry until you want to use them. The pellets have a chemical indicator that makes them turn reddish as they absorb water and become expended.

They can, however, be used over and over: once they have turned red, they may be heated in an oven, which brings them back to new condition. A convection oven works best, with the pellets spread in a thin layer on cookie sheets. They are in new condition in two to two-and-a-half hours. Dry them at 250° Fahrenheit; if you heat them above 260°, the chemical indicator will not tell you when they need drying again. (They will still work, but knowing when they are expended will be problematic.)

Once you have rough turned a bowl — or, if you’ve got a bowl that you intend to be oval, you’ve turned it to its final thickness — bury the bowl in the desiccant pellets. (Note that the desiccant method is limited to bowls with 1″ wall thicknesses.) The bowl must be completely buried, with its inside full and at least one inch of pellets in all directions. Incomplete burial will result in checking.

How long exactly a given bowl will take to dry is dependent on a number of factors: how wet the blank is, how thick the wall and the species of wood all factor into the equation. A beech bowl will take longer than a cherry bowl, and a rough-turned blank will take longer than a finished turned one.

How do you know when your bowl is dry enough? The best way is to first place your freshly turned bowl on a kitchen scale and weigh it. After 24 hours, weigh it again. When it has lost at least one-third of its weight, you can apply finish to a once-turned bowl or re-turn a roughed-out bowl.

Overall, for thin final walls, leaving the bowl in for about 24 hours will usually do the job. On a rough-turned blank, drying will usually take about 48 hours.

You can also immerse a finish-turned bowl in the desiccant for a couple of hours, then remount it in the lathe for finish sanding. This saves time and sandpaper, because the surface is sufficiently dry to sand well without clogging the sandpaper. Then place the bowl back in the desiccant for final drying before you apply finish.

The desiccant process effortlessly speeds things up immensely. You can order a kit of the desiccant from rockler.com.

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