Eucalypts are renowned for their high growth stress levels. These stresses cause splitting, warping and dimensional instability when cutting, processing and drying the wood. In Chile, large Eucalyptus nitens plantations can be found, which, due to these problems, are scarcely utilised for solid wood products (veneer, sawn wood). This study aims to determine the factors influencing growth stress at different stages of tree's development, and to identify whether the factors influencing growth stress change over time. In five stands of different ages, growth strain, as an indicator of growth stress, was measured at different tree heights with the single hole drilling method. The tree variables DBH, tree height, slenderness (height/diameter ratio) and crown parameters also were measured. A correlation analysis of tree variables and growth strains was undertaken. The results obtained indicate a high variability in growth strain values. It was concluded that growth strain is not correlated with a single growth parameter, but with a combination of factors that variously influence it at different ages and tree heights.

Non-destructive evaluation (NDE) methods are common for grading structural lumber with static bending as the traditional NDE method for strength. More recently, longitudinal and transverse vibration techniques have also been proposed for grading lumber. In this study, unjointed and finger-jointed sawn lumber has been evaluated by these traditional and relatively new NDE methods. In total, 188 pieces of 38 mm=89 mm black spruce lumber were tested. Of these, 40 were unjointed, 47 had 2-3 finger joints, and 101 had 5-7 finger joints. The main objective was to evaluate the reliability of the various NDE techniques in predicting the bending stiffness and tensile strength of finger-jointed lumber with different number of finger joints. Results show that all NDE methods provide stiffness values of unjointed and finger-jointed lumber that correlate well with laboratory measured static bending stiffness with R 2 values ranging from 0.76 to 0.97. Moreover, lumber with finger joints has lower bending stiffness than unjointed lumber. Based on the correlation coefficients, there is no evidence that finger joints affect the precision of the strength prediction by NDE methods.