Baltimore Sun article 11/20/00

By Maria Blackburn

Sun Staff

Brad Burdette and Brad Williams, both freshmen at Western
Maryland College, sat in a science laboratory on a campus
abundant with oaks, elms and ashes one day last week
puzzling over their most recent assignment: Identify the 10
squares of wood spread out on the table before them.

The pieces - each about half an inch thick and the size of a
candy bar - looked the same: pale, unfinished, barkless.
They weren't identical, however. Each sample came from a
different kind of tree.

Even after three months of studying the biology, physics and
chemistry of wood, Burdette, Williams and their dozen
classmates in Professor Richard Smith's "science of wood"
class struggled to distinguish the beech, maple and ash from
the walnut and black cherry. Armed with straight razors and
hand-held lenses, the students shaved tiny slices from the
wood and scrutinized the freshly cut end grain for patterns
of pores and rays.

They sighed. They slumped. They sighed again.
Finally Williams and Burdette identified their first piece
of wood: Liriodendron tulipifera - yellow poplar. Others
weren't so lucky.

"This lab is impossible," Sylvanus Adenaike, an 18-year-old
business major from Randallstown, exclaimed from the back of
the lab.

Despite its name, the class isn't just about wood science.
It's about woodworking. Specifically, it's about 18th- and
19th-century woodworking techniques. In the course of the
semester, students use what they learn about wood grain and
cellular structure and apply it to the callous-causing,
knuckle-smashing creation of two 8-feet-long yellow poplar
benches - without power tools.

"We need a band saw," Tyler Stewart, 18, of Demarest, N.J.,
said jokingly as he took a two-minute break from the
shoulder-tingling task of planing wood.

Some facts the class has learned about wood: white oak is
better for making outdoor furniture than red oak because it
does not soak up water as quickly, and wood dried in an oven
has a moisture content of zero. Students know the wood of an
Osage orange tree glows in black light and that yellow
poplars aren't poplars. They're magnolias.

They don't know what kind of wood Smith's desk is made of,
however.

 "He won't tell us," said Williams, 19, of Bowie. Smith would
prefer that his students find that out for themselves, he
said.

What does a piece of wood's cell structure and moisture
content have to do with handsaws and augers?

Everything, said Smith, a chemist who also studies
anti-cancer and anti-aging [correction, anti-AIDS] drugs and has been working with
wood for most of his 56 years. "Although it sounds
complicated, [the science] translates into how you can work
with wood and how you can make work out of wood strong," he
said.

The freshman seminar class meets three times a week - twice
for lectures and once for a woodworking lab in the college's
wood shop. Before the students touched a piece of wood, they
had to sharpen rusty old planes by rubbing them with stones.
That took Williams about 18 hours.

All but four of the students are making the benches, which
require time outside class to complete. The four are making
a chopping block for the shop. And except for an electric
lathe, the students don't use power tools, and they don't
use nails or screws.

Using hand tools requires knowledge of the inherent
strengths and weaknesses of wood, Smith said. "You have to
understand wood," he said. "With power tools, you can cut
wood in any direction you like, but you can only split it
along the grain."

Only four of the class' 13 students plan to major in a
science. None has experience working with wood beyond high
school or middle school shop classes.

Many of the students said the class is harder than they
expected. The median scores for their first test were in the
high 60s, Smith said. "They've risen significantly since
then," he added.

"The classroom part threw me off," Adenaike said as he
worked a plane down a piece of yellow poplar and left a mass
of purple-streaked white curls on the board in the tool's
wake. "The woodworking part - that's what I was looking
forward to."

"It's kind of hard to grasp," Lauren Cramer, an 18-year-old
from Barrington, N.J., and the only woman in the class, said
as she drilled a hole in piece of tree trunk. She said she
had little experience with wood aside from putting logs on
the fire at camp. She said she took the class because it was
one of the few freshman seminars with space remaining.

Erich Bass, 19, of Doylestown, Pa., said he enjoys the
challenge. "It's good to get out," he said, surveying the
chopping block he was working on. "You can only listen to so
many lectures. Besides, after this class I will be able to
buy unfinished furniture and finish it myself."

This is the first year for the class. Smith, a Western
Maryland professor for 30 years, got the idea for the
seminar last spring on the 30-minute drive to the college in
Westminster from his home in Woodsboro, Frederick County.

When he left his house, he thought he would teach a seminar
on geology. "People really love fossils," he said, showing
off a 350-million-year-old fossil on the windowsill in his
cluttered office. Because the nearest fossils are 90 minutes
away in Hancock, however, Smith searched for a topic that
was closer to campus.

When he drove by a sawmill near Littlestown [correction, Libertytown], he remembered
the three yellow poplar trees the college cut down in 1996
to make way for the school's science building, trees that
had been milled into 30 planks there.

The wood had been left to season in the school's gym for the
past three years.

Why wood? Because it's familiar and ubiquitous. "You have to
get students comfortable with a subject, then you can lead
them," he said.

It didn't hurt that Smith loves wood. "There's history in
wood," said Smith, who braved electric fences, curious cows
and thorny branches to collect some of the 50 different
types of local wood needed for the class.

The yellow poplar trees the students are working with stood
outside Smith's office window for more than two dozen years.
"I've looked at those trees, watched squirrels in those
trees from the building for 25 years," Smith said. "Those
were my friends being cut down. We had to use them in some
way."

The benches aren't fancy - just a seat and a back, each
piece made from a single 300-pound, 4-inch-thick plank.

"It's just a plain Jane bench," said Mark Murphy, 18, of
Wilmington, Del.

When complete, the benches will go in the science building,
within a few feet of where the 60-foot trees once stood.
"We're putting them back where they belong," Williams said.
"They're going home."

The students are proud of what they are making and of what
they've learned. They joke that they will lead tours by the
benches to show off their work. Murphy said he will guard
them to ensure that no one carves initials in his handiwork.

The class has three weeks to finish the benches. Students
must also complete a three-hour final exam on the science
section of the class. Even if the benches aren't completed
in time, Smith is ready to pronounce the class a triumph.

"It's a success already," he said. "Just ask them about a
piece of wood."

Originally published Nov 20 2000