AHEC launches new species and grading guide

The Europe team has spent the year reimagining AHEC’s technical publications. The result brings together the species and grading guides into a single ‘Guide to Sustainable American Hardwoods’, complete with lavishly illustrated application case studies. The new design combines all of the technical information on species, applications and the NHLA grading rules with updated illustrated case studies to provide a publication that is informative, educational and inspirational. Its aim is to provide one publication that meets the needs of a broad target audience, from timber traders, through end-users to specifiers. 

 

 

Species guide
AHEC's latest publication combines the species and grading guides into one publication.

The 100-page book contains new information on sustainability, detailing the Seneca Creek legality risk assessment, the American Hardwood Environmental Profile (AHEP) and the map showing forest distribution, growth and timber removal. Further highlighting renewability, each species section gives the time taken by the forest to regrow a cubic metre, derived from AHEC’s online life cycle assessment tool

species carousel
The new guide also includes sections on CLT and thermally modified timber.

Alongside detailed technical performance data, the species section features applications of the timber. These range from furniture in cherry, maple and red oak created for AHEC’s latest design project Connected, to the 40,000m2 of red oak used for cladding, flooring and glulam screening in Bloomberg’s European headquarters in London. There are also new sections on thermal modification of American hardwoods and CLT. It is designed in a way that will allow each AHEC region to drop in their own case studies so that the publication can be printed locally and tailored to individual markets as well as being offered in a wide range of global languages. 

The book is available to view and download online and copies can be pre-ordered through the website. Physical copies will be distributed early December and other languages will become available in the new year. 

Click here to view or pre-order the publication.