Indonesia is a country with high biodiversity, especially in humid tropical forests. One forest products to date are still not replaceable timber from natural forests and the need is increasing with the increase in population. However, because the speed of harvesting that is not balanced with the pace of growth, the pressure on natural forests and the greater availability of timber from natural forests decline, both in terms of quality and volume.
Today has been increasingly felt disadvantages of different types of wood for various raw materials such as timber industry craft industry, to large-scale industry. Meanwhile the amount of wood available diminishing in quantity and quality. Therefore, wood from plantations is expected to meet the needs of the timber for various purposes. Start the Fourth Development Plan, the Ministry of Forestry to build industrial timber estates (HTI), which in 2015 is expected to reach 6.2 million hectares of development and will generate logs of 90 million cubic meters per year.
Wood Mangium (Acaciamangium Willd.), A type of wood that is considered to have good prospects for development in the plantation as a fast-growing timber. Mangium wood has been grown on a large scale in various areas both for fiber, tooling and energy. Until now thought to have developed as much as 20 provenance of timber Mangium (Iriantono 1999). The provenance of a number of properties are expected to have different characteristics, so it is necessary to determine where the most good provenance and in accordance with the utilization of these wood species.
In the utilization of wood necessary technical data to support its use planning. One of the basic data that are often used for this purpose are the data of physical and mechanical properties of wood. Physical and mechanical properties were investigated meliputikerapatan, water content, static bending strength properties, hardness, strength pm, compressive strength parallel and perpendicular to the fiber, shear firmness, determination belahdan attraction.
Understanding Wood
In our daily life, wood is a material that is very often used for the purpose of a specific use. Sometimes as certain goods, timber can not be replaced with other materials because of its distinctive properties. We as users of wood that each type has different traits, it is necessary to know the properties of the timber so that in the elections or for the purpose of determining the type of specific use to be really fit with what we want.
The following described properties of wood (physical and mechanical) as well as a wide use. Wood is a forest product that is easily processed to be used as goods in accordance with technological advances. Wood has some properties that can not be imitated by other ingredients. Selection and use of wood for a purpose of use, requires a knowledge of the properties of wood. These properties are important in the wood processing industry because of the knowledge of these properties not only to choose the type of wood right and wide usage possible, but also to choose a possible replacement by other wood species when the species in question is hard to come by continuously or too expensive.
Wood from different types of trees that have properties different. Even in a tree, the wood has different properties. Of the many properties of wood are different from one another, there are some properties that are common to all types of wood are:
o Wood is composed of cells that have various types and composition of the cell wall consists of a chemical compound in the form of cellulose and hemi cellulose (carbohydrates) and lignin (non-carbohydrate).
o All the wood is anisotropic, which show different properties when tested according to the three main directions (longitudinal, radial and tangential).
o Wood is a hygroscopic material, which can absorb or release moisture (humidity) as a result of changes in humidity and temperature of the surrounding air.
o Wood can be attacked by pests and diseases and can be burned mainly in the dry state.
Wood press (compression-wood) is wood yangterbentuk due to tree growth is not lurusatau an angle to the axis of the tree and is a form of abnormality in the trunk of the tree wood Leaf Needle (KDJ) caused olehpengaruh earth gravity (Panshin and de Zeeuw 1980; Haygreen and Bowyer 1982; Tsoumis 1991; Bowyeret.al. 2003; Torges 2005). Wood tap growing very fast and has a very wide spread mainly on the types of KDJ growing rapidly.
Currently, wood press often found in plantations of the types KDJ like Agathis sp., Pinussp. and Podocarpus sp. Wood press deemed defective because of inferior wood or different from normal wood (Kartal and Booth 2000). The proportion of wood hit a tree trunk is also influenced by the slope of the growth of the tree. The greater the angle of slope of the KDJ growth, the greater the proportion of compressed wood.
Such as the wood of Pinus resinosa of forest plantations in New York who has a tendency to grow slanted 5º contains approximately 5 ~ 40% wood press, and when the slope reaches 10 ~ 40º will contain about 40 ~ 70% wood press (Kartal and Booth 2000). Wood resin (Agathis loranthifolia Salisb.) Is one of the KDJ that grows naturally in Indonesia. These plants are often found in areas of West Sumatra, North Sumatra, Kalimantan and Java, Sulawesi, Maluku and Irian Jaya.