Subfossil Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) Wood from Northern Finland—Physical, Mechanical, and Chemical Properties and Suitability for Specialty Products

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article has been carefully crafted. I have no major comments to make. However, the differences in the contents of substances such as cellulose, hemicelluloses may be due to the way these components are determined in wood. Direct methods give more reliable results despite their complexity. Please take this into account in future work.  

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable comment. We will take it into account in our future work.

Reviewer 2 Report

General comments

This paper is an interesting and comprehensive analysis of the physical, mechanical, and chemical properties of 2 sections of Scots pine. The 2 trunks were dated as 404-486 CE and 1318-1444 CE.  The paper also contains a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis regarding the utilization of this material.

I generally found the SWOT analysis sections underwhelming. The abstract reads as if the SWOT analysis is a major part of the paper, but fairly limited information is presented throughout the paper on this, and most of which I think are fairly obvious. There is nothing in the Discussion section on the SWOT analysis, which further makes this read to me that this was more of an afterthought added onto the paper.   Regarding the implementation, I think there is generally a bit of a disconnect between all of the mechanical, physical and chemical property measurements done here and the SWST/market analysis. For this wood to be used in picture frames, jewelry, and art work, detailed knowledge of the wood properties probably are not needed. That is, if the wood dries without much problem and the wood machines well into whatever is made of it, that is probably good enough for being used for ‘value added decorative products … depicting the regional culture’.

My suggestion would be to deemphasize the SWOT analysis in the abstract, and then move more of the SWOT results into the discussion.  Some parts of the SWOT analysis discussion could be added into the discussion whereby the authors could explain that while harvesting this type of material is extremely expensive and thus greatly limits the markets (and really there is no reason to use this type of material for ‘traditional’ market), but there are niche markets for this type of material. The authors can then use what they have in the results with the ancient musical instruments, the art pieces, etc.  The sentence in the Conclusions on the use of subfossil Scots pine for ‘load-bearing strength or abrasion resistance’ applications can be removed since again the cost is prohibitive and there is no real reason to use this particular wood for this application. This is just a general comment, but Scots pine is not used in acoustic guitars, but recently some 3,000 year old Sitka spruce was recovered from Alaska that had been preserved.  The Santa Cruz guitar company in the U.S. constructed a few guitars and they sold for approximately double or triple what a guitar made of ‘new’ wood would cost.  As the authors mention, the story is unique there is unique and thus these type of niche products would be where the use should be.

So far, my comments have been critical, but the rest of the paper is quite interesting and unique. The impact of nearly ~550 and ~1500 years of aging in an anaerobic environment is quite interesting on its own, and the authors have done a lot of comprehensive tests on the 2 trunks. This is where I see the strength of the paper since it adds to the fundamental understanding of what happens to wood during long periods of preservation. While the tests are fairly exhaustive, I think a picture taken with a microscope of a microtome prepared slide would further add to the story here since the density of the material is slightly lower than the reference data provided. Upon reading this paper a picture or two of the anatomy is about all I could think of the paper lacking.

The language used in the paper is clear, most of my comments on the writing deal with the abstract which must be rewritten for clarity.

Specific comments

Abstract.

L16 – change ‘of wood’ to ‘both stem wood and knot wood’

L18 and throughout text – AD should be changed to the secular equivalent – CE (common era).

L18 – define SWOT

L19 – I assume this means in comparison to the older trunk?

L23 – awkward end to this sentence – how about starting L22 with “Due to the degradation that occurred over time…’ and then removing ‘as an indication of slow degredation’

L24 – Define ‘composition’ as ‘chemical composition’

L29 – add ‘niche’ ‘developing commercial uses’

Introduction

L18 – Add “In certain environments’ or something similar, since wood decay can also occur very quickly

Methods

L221 – is ‘six-person’ research team needed? How does this six person team relate to the 10 authors listed here? 

Results

Table 2 – Define whether the References are for stem wood or knot wood. 

Funding statement: Delete “Please add”

Author Response

Thank you for the very valuable comments on this article. We have made the following corrections based on the comments:

• The description of the SWOT analysis has been subtracted from the abstract and clarified according to the comments.
• A separate subsection (4.3) has been added to the discussion chapter to discuss the results of the SWOT analysis. Some of the SWOT analysis text from the results chapter have been transferred to the discussion and the discussion has been deepened. The possible use for niche applications of this raw material is now emphasized more.
• We removed the sentence in conclusions where "load-bearing strength or abrasion resistance" was mentioned.
• Corrections were also made in accordance with all the specific comments (L16-L221).
• The suggestion of a picture from a microtome prepared slice was really good, but unfortunately, we were not able to do it.