Dendrochronology

An English reader meets das Splintholz and pictures a splint, the strip that holds a broken finger straight. That splint is die Schiene in German. Der Splint in a timber report is sapwood: the pale, living outer band of the trunk, the youngest rings just under the bark. In a workshop the same word names a split pin, which is a third thing again. In this field the difference is the whole point, because sapwood is what rots or is trimmed away first, and it takes the last years of the tree’s life with it. A beam that keeps its sapwood out to the bark can give an exact felling year; one cut back to das Kernholz gives only a year after which the tree was felled. Where die Splintgrenze survives, the missing rings can at least be estimated. Read Splint- in a German report as sapwood, every time.