Segheria Valle Sacra

Sweet chestnut

A local suistainable resource

Sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) is a deciduous broadleaf tree native to southern Europe, north Africa and western Asia. In Italy there are about 788.000 hectares of chestnut wood (around 9% of the national forest). Piedmont is the region with more chestnut woods (about 97.000 hectares) among the Italian regions. Sweet chestnut was widely spread in our land by the ancient Romans. In the past our people depended on chestnut: they used to make flour out of chestnut fruits and they utilised its wood for many purposes.

Why we value sweet chestnut

Sweet chestnut wood has high-quality technical properties. Among the trees that grow in our forest, it's the one with the highest durability and with the highest hardness. Chestnut wood can be used to create products with different shapes and sizes, and thus it's a multifunctional wood. The local availabilty of this species is high in our region, and therefore the exploitation of this plant species is ingrained in our people's culture. Using local wood reduces the costs and the environmental impacts caused by the materials transportantion.

Technical info and uses

Appearance: heartwood is a light to medium brown, sapwood is narrow and it's pale white to light brown. Wood grain is apparent.
Durability (fungi): durable wood (class 2)
Durability (insects): Cerambycidae ssp. = susceptible (sapwood only); Anobiidae ssp. = susceptible; Lyctidae ssp. = susceptible (sapwood only); Termites spp. = moderately durable
Hardness (Brinell): low (~19 N/mm²)
Average dry weight: low (~580 kg/m³)
Volumetric shrinkage: medium to low
Mechanical properties: medium resistance to axial compression (~50 N/mm²); medium resistance to bending (~110 N/mm²); medium elastic modulus (~11600 N/mm²).
Workability: overall easy to work. Glues, stains and finishes well. Heartwood is not easy to impregnate.
Common uses: sweet chestnut is used in a wide range of external and internal pruducts: posts (for orchards/vineyards, in arboriculture, for the costruction of fences, in environmental engineering), joinery (furniture, garden furniture, cladding, decking, flooring). Chestnut wood can be used for structural timber products. Chestnut wood is locally used as fuel, altough it's not such a good fuel due to its high content in tannins and to its low density. It is used to exctract tannins and to construct barrels containing wine.