Starship Asterisk*

Oops! Yes, I used your coords, probably confusing ezip in the process.

So nit, you don't live in the pine forest? That's very un-nitpicky of you to be 50km off. :-0

Rob

rstevenson wrote:Oops! Yes, I used your coords, probably confusing ezip in the process.

So nit, you don't live in the pine forest? That's very un-nitpicky of you to be 50km off. :-0

Rob

You'll have to give me a degree of latitude on this matter. Not to mention that, with continental drift, my house is moving 56 mm closer every year.

I think Chris is the only one who has given away his precise coordinates. The rest of us apparently need to rely on obscurity for our security.

Or... maybe some of us just don't care what coordinates we have.

@ Nitpicker
I've been a wood worker my entire life, as was my father and his father before him and possibly his father before him, no one knows and I don't care.
but I'm here to tell you that there is unequivocally no such thing as an exotic pine, moreover there is noting at all exotic about pine, it's either chalk full of knots or it's not full of knots

THX1138 wrote:@ Nitpicker
I've been a wood worker my entire life, as was my father and his father before him and possibly his father before him, no one knows and I don't care.
but I'm here to tell you that there is unequivocally no such thing as an exotic pine, moreover there is noting at all exotic about pine, it's either full of knots or it's not

I humbly submit to your superior knowledge of wood. But I confess that I'm interested in why you think pine cannot be exotic, which is just another word for foreign, or introduced, as far as I know. But your argument would best be had with the (deep breath) Queensland Department of National Parks, Recreation, Sport and Racing:
http://www.nprsr.qld.gov.au/parks/beerb ... about.html

... and with HQPlantations Pty Ltd, who manage the "exotic" Southern Pine plantations in Beerburrum State Forest and elsewhere:
http://www.hqplantations.com.au/southernpine.html

I nearly fell out of my chair, sure enough those (shrimp on the barbie) Aussies have plantations of exotic pines growing.
But......they are simply calling the trees exotic because they are not indigenous trees in the country, that and some other genetically altered pines that they claim will produce less branches. IE Knots in the lumber after it's milled.
You offer a good point though, i suppose if one were an Eskimo every tree would seem exotic to you, nonetheless the Aussies have sure enough genetically altered some pines and that definitely gives them the right to call them exotic pines so i stand corrected, you are right and i am wrong............Next time i see something that's even as far fetched as exotic basal wood I'm not going to say a thing

And the bulk of our prawns/shrimp come from farms in Thailand. The world is changing very quickly.

I think the reason it's hard to think of pine wood as being exotic is because of how fast it grows, how plentiful it is, and how mundane its qualities are. Even if it is a foreigner in Australia, it's more like a visiting redneck than anything. I love pine trees and it pains me to make that comparison, but still... Eucalyptus and Moreton Bay fig trees grow commonly in the U.S. and no one considers them exotic, either. If you trim the word of all of its connotations and consider it a synonym to "foreign" then yes, the word is used appropriately. However, when considering the connotative meaning it becomes almost completely wrong.

THX1138 wrote:But......they are simply calling the trees exotic because they are not indigenous trees in the country...

That's pretty much the ecological definition of "exotic". A species out of place.

There are native pine species in Australia, but not these ones, it seems. I might guess that the word "exotic" was deemed preferable to any other, for marketing reasons. The terms "non-native" and "introduced" have a long history of failure and unintended consequences in Australia's ecological history.

Locally grown American specialty!

Nitpicker wrote:There are native pine species in Australia, but not these ones, it seems. I might guess that the word "exotic" was deemed preferable to any other, for marketing reasons. The terms "non-native" and "introduced" have a long history of failure and unintended consequences in Australia's ecological history.

Exotic rabbits, anyone?

geckzilla wrote:Locally grown American specialty!

I was at a store the other day where they were selling a bag of around a dozen Ponderosa pine cones for about $10. I guess they're a bit exotic to city dwellers. But my my reckoning, that means I'm a multimillionaire.

They were selling those here, too. They come heavily scented and ready to be placed around the house next to the pumpkin spice candles.

Chris Peterson wrote:

Nitpicker wrote:There are native pine species in Australia, but not these ones, it seems. I might guess that the word "exotic" was deemed preferable to any other, for marketing reasons. The terms "non-native" and "introduced" have a long history of failure and unintended consequences in Australia's ecological history.

Exotic rabbits, anyone?

"Exotic cane toads?"
"Really?"
"Yes, they're from South America."
"Ooh, fancy. We'll have some of those."

Which of the three is the worst? Cat, cane toad, fox, or rabbit? Apparently there are also 300k dromedary camels living in Oz, too.

geckzilla wrote:Which of the three is the worst? Cat, cane toad, fox, or rabbit? Apparently there are also 300k dromedary camels living in Oz, too.

According to the threat levels documented here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_s ... _Australia

... the cane toad and fox (both extreme threats) are worst, then the cat (high to extreme), then the rabbit (high), then the camel (medium to high). Lots of other pests in the mix, too.

And I'm sure one could quantify the threats from all the introduced species in Australia, and arrange the numbers in such a way as to find ratios matching closely with ezip's planetary orbit ratios. And the universe is doomed. And little lambs eat ivy. It can't all be coincidence. (Or was it just a minor mistake by Rob?)

I can accept no responsibility for lambs eating ivy -- though I've used many a pine board in my exotic woodworking over the years. (Ponderosa Pine, White Pine, pinus whateverus, but not, so far, pinus exotica Australopithicus.)

Rob

Nitpicker wrote:And I'm sure one could quantify the threats from all the introduced species in Australia, and arrange the numbers in such a way as to find ratios matching closely with ezip's planetary orbit ratios. And the universe is doomed. And little lambs eat ivy. It can't all be coincidence. (Or was it just a minor mistake by Rob?)

LOL but you're going to give ezip some kind of complex
sup ezip, just wondering where you were going with this post / your point ?

Never used any soft woods when doing inlay work for myself let alone ever having any customer request it be used for something they wanted but i do know a few people that have dyed pine when the color they needed just didn't exist in nature.
Such as but not limited to blue or aqua

Until ezip joins the rest of us in our strange and exotic human conversations, I'll still harbour a suspicion that ezip is the creation of a computer program. I could be completely wrong of course, but my accusations at least make me feel less bad about my involvement in the hijack of ezip's topic.

THX1138 wrote:Never used any soft woods when doing inlay work for myself...

Soft woods or softwoods? Quite different things.

...but i do know a few people that have dyed pine when the color they needed just didn't exist in nature.
Such as but not limited to blue or aqua

Beetle kill pine is often shot through with blue, and is both beautiful and expensive.

Nitpicker wrote:Until ezip joins the rest of us in our strange and exotic human conversations, I'll still harbour a suspicion that ezip is the creation of a computer program. I could be completely wrong of course, but my accusations at least make me feel less bad about my involvement in the hijack of ezip's topic.

This thread is in a better place now. There is no reason to feel bad.

Chris Peterson wrote:Soft woods or softwoods? Quite different things.

For me, soft woods would be my swamp. Softwoods would be the pine that's growing in my soft woods, along with the swamp maple, which seems appropriately named.