BAGUETTE ANNIVERSARY RINGS

Stainless steel jewelry is becoming the most popular jewelry trend on the market for both men and women. Bucasi offers a complete line of contemporary jewelry in stainless steel 316L grade surgical steel. Stainless steel is hypoallergenic, durable, comfortable and economical. This stainless steel and gold plated checker design around the ring with the words "I Love You Forever" engraved around the ring. The ring pendant measures about 0.27 inches (7mm) high and 0.95 inches (24mm) wide and hung on a 24" stainless steel chain. Available also in Smaller Ring size. Stainless steel won't change color and doesn't require any maintenance to keep it looking brand new. Presented in gift box. Exclusively from Bucasi. Great Gift!

Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many plants. It has been used for centuries for both fuel and as a construction material for several types of living areas such as houses. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers (which are strong in tension) embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression. In the strict sense wood is produced as secondary xylem in the stems of trees (and other woody plants). In a living tree it transfers water and nutrients to the leaves and other growing tissues, and has a support function, enabling woody plants to reach large sizes or to stand up for themselves. Wood may also refer to other plant materials with comparable properties, and to material engineered from wood, or wood chips or fiber.

People have used wood for millennia for many purposes, primarily as a fuel or as a construction material for making houses, tools, weapons, furniture, packaging, artworks, and paper. Wood can be dated by carbon dating and in some species by dendrochronology to make inferences about when a wooden object was created. The year-to-year variation in tree-ring widths and isotopic abundances gives clues to the prevailing climate at that time.

Formation
Wood, in the strict sense, is yielded by trees, which increase in diameter by the formation, between the existing wood and the inner bark, of new woody layers which envelop the entire stem, living branches, and roots. Technically this is known as secondary growth; it is the result of cell division in the vascular cambium, a lateral meristem, and subsequent expansion of the new cells.

Growth rings
Where there are clear seasons, growth can occur in a discrete annual or seasonal pattern, leading to growth rings; these can usually be most clearly seen on the end of a log, but are also visible on the other surfaces. If these seasons are annual these growth rings are referred to as annual rings. Where there is no seasonal difference growth rings are likely to be indistinct or absent.

If there are differences within a growth ring, then the part of a growth ring nearest the center of the tree, and formed early in the growing season when growth is rapid, is usually composed of wider elements. It is usually lighter in color than that near the outer portion of the ring, and is known as earlywood or springwood. The outer portion formed later in the season is then known as the latewood or summerwood. However, there are major differences, depending on the kind of wood.

Knots

A knot on a tree at the Garden of the Gods public park in Colorado Springs, Colorado (October 2006).A knot is a particular type of imperfection in a piece of wood; it will affect the technical properties of the wood, usually for the worse, but may be exploited for artistic effect. In a longitudinally sawn plank, a knot will appear as a roughly circular "solid" (usually darker) piece of wood around which the grain of the rest of the wood "flows" (parts and rejoins). Within a knot, the direction of the wood (grain direction) is up to 90 degrees different from the grain direction of the regular wood.

In the tree a knot is either the base of a side branch or a dormant bud. A knot (when the base of a side branch) is conical in shape (hence the roughly circular cross-section) with the tip at the point in stem diameter at which the plant's cambium was located when the branch formed as a bud.

During the development of a tree, the lower limbs often die, but may persist for a time, sometimes years. Subsequent layers of growth of the attaching stem are no longer intimately joined with the dead limb, but are grown around it. Hence, dead branches produce knots which are not attached, and likely to drop out after the tree has been sawn into boards.

In grading lumber and structural timber, knots are classified according to their form, size, soundness, and the firmness with which they are held in place. This firmness is affected by, among other factors, the length of time for which the branch was dead while the attaching stem continued to grow.

Knots materially affect cracking (known in the US as checking, and the UK as shakes) and warping, ease in working, and cleavability of timber. They are defects which weaken timber and lower its value for structural purposes where strength is an important consideration. The weakening effect is much more serious when timber is subjected to forces perpendicular to the grain and/or tension than where under load along the grain and/or compression. The extent to which knots affect the strength of a beam depends upon their position, size, number, and condition. A knot on the upper side is compressed, while one on the lower side is subjected to tension. If there is a season check in the knot, as is often the case, it will offer little resistance to this tensile stress. Small knots, however, may be located along the neutral plane of a beam and increase the strength by preventing longitudinal shearing. Knots in a

ST. PATRICK.
A Sermon by Father Thomas N. Burke, O.P., delivered in Saint Patrick's Cathedral, New York, on Sunday, March 17th, 1872.

Let us now praise men of renown, and our fathers in their generation;
These men of mercy, whose godly deeds have not failed;
Good things continue with their seed.
Their posterity is a holy inheritance;
And their seed hath stood in the covenants:
And their children for their sakes remain forever;
Their seed and their glory shall not be forsaken.
Let the people show forth their wisdom,
And the Church declares their praise.— Eccles. 44.

One of the great duties of God's Church, to which she has ever been most faithful, is the celebration of her saints. From end to end of the year the Church's saints are the theme of her daily thanksgiving and praise. They are her heroes, and therefore she honours them; just as the world celebrates its own heroes, records their great deeds, and builds up monuments to perpetuate their names and their glory. The saints were the living and most faithful representatives of Christ our Lord, of his virtues, his love, his actions, his power, so that He lived in them, and wrought in them, and through them, the redemption of men; therefore the Church honours, not so much the saint, as Christ our Lord in the saint; for, in truth, the wisdom of saintliness which she celebrates, wherever it is found, is nothing else, as described to us in Scripture, than

A vapour of the power of God, and a certain pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty God;
The brightness of eternal light,
And the unspotted mirror of God's majesty,
And the image of His goodness;
And through nations she conveys herself into holy souls,
She makes the friends of God and prophets.

Nor does the Church's honour of the saints derogate from that of God, as some say; otherwise the Lord, who is jealous of His divine power and glory, would never command us to praise the saints as he does in the words of my text, and in many other parts of the Holy Scriptures:

Praise ye the Lord in his saints,
God is wonderful in His saints.

Nay, so far from lessening our love and praise of God, the saints are the very channel through which praise is most acceptably given to Him, and if the Scriptures command us to praise the Lord in all His works, how much more in His saints — the masterpieces of nature and grace!

Let no one, therefore, suppose that we are assembled today to dishonour God by honouring his saint: let no one imagine that we are come together to bless and praise other than Our God Himself, the Father of lights, for every best and every perfect gift which He has given us through our great Apostle, Saint Patrick.
He was a man of renown, for his work and his name are known and celebrated by all men; and our father in his generation, for he begat us to God by the Gospel.
He was, moreover, a man of mercy, for, when he might have lived for himself and for the enjoyment of his own ease, he chose rather to sacrifice himself, and to make his life cheap and of no account in his sight, and this through the self-same mercy which brought the Lord Jesus Christ forth from the bosom of the Father, namely, mercy for a people who were perishing.
His godly deeds have not failed, for the Lord crowned his labours with blessings of abundance.
Good things continue with his seed, for the faith which he planted still flourishes in the land.
His posterity is a holy inheritance, for the scene of his labours, grown famous for holiness, obtained among the nations the singular title of the Island of Saints. And his seed hath stood in the covenants, for it is well known and acknowledged that no power, however great, has been able to move them from the faith once delivered to' the saints. His children for his sake remain forever, for he blessed them, as we read, that they should never depart from the fold of the one Shepherd into which he had gathered them, and his prayer in heaven has verified for one thousand five hundred years his prophetic blessing on earth.
His seed and his glory shall not be forsaken, for ' they are the children of saints, and look for that life which God will give to those that never change their faith from Him.
Seeing, therefore, that all the conditions of the Inspired Word have been so strikingly fulfilled in our saint, is it wonderful that we should also desire to fulfil the rest of the command, Let the people show forth His wisdom, and the Church declare His praise?

I propose, therefore, for your consideration — first, the character of the saint himself; secondly, the work of his Apostleship; and thirdly, the merciful providence of Almighty God toward the Irish Church and the Irish people. The light of Christianity had burned for more than four hundred years before its rays penetrated to Ireland.
For the first three hundred years of