Many Weekly readers offered up their favorite factoids in response to Rob’s query for woodworking trivia last week. Congrats to Lynn Barbier of Napoleonville, Louisiana, who won a $50 Rockler gift card in our random trivia drawing. A sampling of those trivia contributions is below (appearance in Feedback here did not affect the chances of winning the gift card). Other trivia submissions not shown are under consideration for future publication in Woodworker’s Journal Magazine. – Editor
Most trees have branches like arms reaching up to the sky. Lots of them have a trunk like a car. But do you know which has its own knees? A bald cypress. – Lynn Barbier
Here’s something I thought was true but is totally incorrect: What we usually call a Texas tumbling weed actually arrived via North Dakota in a shipment of flax seeds around the 1870s. And, it’s not even native to North America. – Gus Gonzales
The most stable wood is actually white pine. – Tom Hinaman
A reader’s locale confirms one of Rob’s trivia tidbits from last week. – Editor
My wife and I have a house in Maine about 10 miles from the last remaining Shaker community, which is on the border of New Gloucester and Poland. We have been on more than one tour of it, and I can confirm that the tour guides continue to claim the circular saw as a Shaker invention. Spinning wheel + saw = circular saw. – Dean Bandes
And all this trivia talk prompted another reader to recount an early woodworking paradox. – Editor
I was into woodworking from the first grade. I pestered my father for more wood all the time. One day, he got frustrated and said, “Norman, you have to understand, wood doesn’t grow on trees.” I was very confused. – Norm Staller
