Why would the wood hunters have valuables on them? Personally when I go into a dangerous neighborhood I take the least amount with me that I need.

@Muuski Gold coins for paying finders fees from locals, perhaps work items to allow them to carry the trees out of the woods, maybe magical items for determining the quality of the wood somehow, etc... I was really just looking for a reason for the bandits to be there. If the forest is spooky and dangerous, people need a reason to go there and risk it, and that risk can provide the reason bandits are there in the first place...

Maybe the bandits also want the wood. It apparently rivals any metal that can be produced, at least temporarily. This gives them an incentive to give loggers more trouble than petty theft would. Tree poaching could also introduce a black market that diverts the valuable resources to inappropriate buyers, such as other criminals or rival states.

Ironwood is the first thing I thought of...

A controlled fire can take down any tree, even the largest ones. Also in a low tech scenario, a clever villager can simply dig up a bit the roots and poison it with salt or anything inexpensive for the scenario, slowly killing the trees, weakening its roots and patiently waiting for gravity to make the job or just dig out a lot the roots a cutting them to speed up things, in a few months the tree is reduced to lumber.

@jean Living trees are extremely difficult to burn, and the method of harvest you describe is unlikely to be very efficient, so it will have a difficult time causing marked changes in the forest that would change its character as a "dark, dangerous place."

What about axes? If you whack at it long enough, you can probably grind a tree down in a week or two, even with a comparatively dull tool. Plus you could make some sort of scheme where there are a bunch of axes, a few people who swing them, and more people who sharpen the dulled axes. Would that not work?

@Grault If the bandits also want the wood, how are they cutting it and how are they able to sell it?

@jean Why wouldn't "Diamondwood" also be more resistant to fire? And why would super tall trees have super deep roots that are... also... diamondwood making it hard to "dig it out"? A cluster of the tree's would have a fine weave of diamondwood roots making it all but impossible to go more than surface deep...

A similar idea would be to make the wood too hard to saw into planks, or make their steel too weak to saw it.

@Vilx for an axe to work, it has to be harder than the material it's hitting. Even a dull axe won't cut down a tree if the tree is harder than the axe, it would just squish the axe more and more out of an "axe shape." This is the same concept of an anvil or a hydraulic press. The thing doing the pressing or smashing has to be harder than the thing getting smashed, otherwise it just gets smashed itself instead.

@jean I'll point out that salt is probably also a precious commodity in the time period we're talking about, as the only two ways to acquire it are salt mines (that you literally have to force people to do) or evaporating sea water. Both of which are going to be localized trade exports. And everyone needs a little bit of salt in their diet to stay healthy. Using it poisoning trees is the least efficient use I can think of.

@stix - Well, water can erode rock... but, yeah, good point.

@Vilx water erodes rock because it either dissolves the rock, or carries particles that are harder than the rock. Water itself can't erode hard insoluble rock and only acts as a carrier for things that can. This is why high pressure water cutters contain small cutter particles instead of just pure water.

@stix - Oh, really? I didn't know that. Cool. :)

@Jean Actually, cork specifically exists as a natural fire-retardant, to stop the cork-oak from burning during forest fires. So, a fire will not take down a cork-oak. Plus, with larger trees, you often find that the outer layers char, but then insulate and protect the inner layers. You would have to burn the tree, put out the fire, chip off the fire-hardened charred layers (which can get harder than copper) and then repeat.

1. Stone axes are among some of the oldest technology in history. 2.You could break down a diamond tree with a hammer. 3. the egyptians had saws that could cut stone. you don't use metal teeth on such saws.

@John Only diamonds cut other diamonds. It's silly to think you could break one with a stone axe.

@stix you can smash a diamond into powder with a copper hammer, hard is not the same thing as strong. Diamond is very brittle, anything hard by the nature of how hardness works will be brittle.

A supply of flint axes and motivation is enough to fell any tree. We have the technology since Neolithic. -1. "only diamonds can cut diamonds" doesn't mean that no tool can touch it. How was the first diamond cut then? Diamonds are not cut, they are broken.

@Chronocidal Jean said "controlled fire", not "wildfire". "Controlled fire" can mean someone building a clay furnace around the tree, fueling and blowing it. Cork can be burned in a furnace.