Posted by James Pepper on March 30, 2000 at 21:02:52:
In Reply to: definition of "heartwood" posted by Scott Andrews on March 30, 2000 at 19:30:43:
We can look in the dictionary and determine the definitions of heartwood, but in this part of the south, the use of the word "heartwood" refers to the hearts, the knots in the wood. Regional dialects have their own permutations. You and I would call a possum a possum, but according to the dictionary it is an oppossum, pronounced O-possum and probably people in England think it is the oppossum. They don't have them, so why are they naming them?
Diane's website shows a ship with knots in the lumber of the deck.
The Constitution's floors are painted anyway, so getting a color off of the deck is a little hard to do. Although they did renovate her, and I think the article was in National Geographic, I remember the incident because they were interested in the Osage Orange trees that blew down in the Charleston hurricaine, to get the keel wood from those trees. I informed them that Texas is full of these trees, they were used for fence posts, but they are so hearty that the fence posts acted like grafts and trees grew out of those plantings. Today there are lines of BoDark (Osage Orange) trees all over Texas, some several miles in length.
Diane makes a point that the wood was not that old and would not have attained the level of work that the Olympic had, since the ship was new.
James Pepper