How did the Guild get involved in wood preservation?
We became involved with preservation issues in 1989, when we started making custom roofs for log hunting lodges and other specialty buildings. The owners were aware that wood was becoming scarce and wanted to know what could be done to preserve the new wood roofs they were buying. We didn’t know the answer, but knew it was a very good question. We started researching, pulling in information from many sources. We found that a good body of research had been done on comparative product studies by Texas A&M Forest Products Lab, Oregon State University and by the US Forest Service Forest Products Lab, in Madison, Wisconsin. This included actual weatherization and accelerated weatherization tests with side-by-side comparisons of most of the standard off-the-shelf wood care products on the market. Their research is still continuing, with a recent addition of studies being done at the University of California, Richmond Campus.
