Presidents message WoW Mar/Apl 2025

by
Eric Krum

Dear Members,

Let me start with an apology. This is my third President’s message but owing to production delays and our tortuous mail service none of the previous messages, in the last issue of 2024 and the first of 2025, have reached Australian shores as yet. I know it is the same all around the world. I share your frustration with the delays as I know many of you rely on the printed copy to keep in touch with the Society. Some of you may have taken advantage of the Secretary’s emails alerting you to the posting of those issues on our website. I would encourage everyone to seek them out and get your news online even before it hits the press.

Our editor, Mihaly Czako, is champing at the bit for this message, at the end of January for the March-April issue. This is part of the Publications Committee’s plan to get in front of the game and have this one out before March, and then to stay in front throughout the year.

The World of Wood has fascinating nooks and crannies to suit all tastes. My obsession is the Wood Quiz hosted by Raimund Aichbauer.

I am part of an informal group of members who meet by Zoom each week to discuss world affairs and wood identification. When Raimund’s quiz appears all world events are parked to one side and we focus on the latest conundrum.  

I joined the Society over a decade ago to improve my wood identification skills. In the subsequent years I have been distracted collecting wood samples, microscope slides, turning, wood working and participating in Society meets. Never-the-less I have enjoyed the good fortune of honing my identification skills under the tutelage of firstly Ian McLaughlin (#6624HL deceased) and then Jim Schubert (#8613). Ian chaired many workshops for local members in the early 2000’s and then revamped them in the years before Covid. He embraced all forms of technology but didn’t forget the traditional methods, including trying to burn down my house with the ‘burnt splinter test’ which is a curiosity of Australian timber studies.  

Jim is the Society’s modern-day equivalent of Ernie Ives, maintaining the science and art of microscope slide making. Ernie used his microtome to produce multiple copies of slides and distributed them to members all around the world, and I am privileged to hold several hundred in my collection. Jim uses a manual microtome and produces a limited number of copies of which I hold nearly two thousand. Many of you will have a copy of Ernie’s publication, “A Guide to Wood Microtomy”. Perhaps we might be able to encourage Jim into writing an update as Ives and Schubert’s Guide to Wood Microtomy?  

We are lucky to have such extensive resources to inform our anatomy and identification studies but in our Zoom sessions we increasingly rely upon the Inside Wood Database to search and narrow down identities. Without doubt this is the best service available to lay workers and it’s free.  

Not everyone is driven to the study of wood anatomy but if you are and want to join our Zoom sessions, send me an email and I will forward an invitation to you. Until then, look out for the next quiz from Raimund.  

John Lyons

#9737