Of intererest from the book The Conservation of Wood Artifacts by Achim Unger from page 37 comparing recent wood with aged wood. You'll notice down at the bottom of page 37 a direct reference to a type of brittleness that is not really related to bending strength... rather impact strength. You'll also notice that the stiffness of wood is a bit more complicated then what we usually talk about... 9 different and independant elastic constants are used. Brittleness can be associated with the term weakness... but the words are not interchangeable. An old piece of wood can easily be brittle in the sense that it will snap in two when its elastic limit is reached rather then bend... but it will take just as much force to reach this limit as in non brittle wood. Cheers RicB http://books.google.com/books?id=M5vCl0jlCCUC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=brittle+wood+strength&source=web&ots=G9bn8K9XMo&sig=2jzbJivS0WkxZrulXyy5w1ELC8w#PPA40,M1
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