Why do dwarves chop down trees?

[Hand of Evil]

Simple: Barrels for their beer and whisky - whisky has to age and once a barrel is used, it is not used again but will be burnt to produce charcoal that is used in the process of making their version of scotch. This charcoal is also used for other items too, such as medicines, soaps and hookah.

Other used of barrels, chairs and beds. Many dwarves claim that there is not a more comfortable bed that one made from a 200 year old barrel!



Oh, some of that is from real life.

Other things - trade goods for underground races, material for bridges and mine tracks.

 

[Pbartender]

This charcoal is also used for other items too, such as medicines, soaps and hookah.

Now I've got this image of dwarves smoking great big meerschaum pipes. But instead of smoking tobacco in them, they smoke charcoal. Connoisseurs, of course, can distinguish between charcoals made from different types of wood.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

To piss off elves.

 

[Relique du Madde]

Stocks for their blunderbusses.

 

[Meatboy]

same reason as any other race. Barring huge magical expenditure to feed their population I will go ahead and assume they need land for growing food. They need wheat for all their ales don't they?

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

toothpicks, skewers and chopsticks.

clear ground for parking lots & strip-malls.

luxury items (after all, every common dwarf lives in a house of stone, but only the obscenely wealthy can afford mansions built of wooden bricks with gardens crossed by sawdust paths.)

 

[Al'Kelhar]

Because trees block their view of the mountains.

Marvin the Martian - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Allegro]

Because mithril like aluminum requires a lot of energy to refine. Or stated differently, the economy of the dwarves would collapse if not for cheap plentiful sources of energy, mainly charcoal.

 

[DreadPirateMurphy]

They trade it to another race that lives deeper in the earth without access to the surface. The deep race gains raw material for ships that ply underground rivers and seas. The dwarves get food (deep cattle meat, mushrooms, etc.), adamantine or mithril ore, gems, and/or other rarities found only deep below the ground.

 

[Sigurd]

I'm told it takes about 500lbs of charcoal to make a shortsword. Charcoal itself is made from more wood. Coal does not have the same properties as charcoal. Sometimes it wont do for the metal you are working\creating.

Its not possible to say the dwarves will just use metal for things because there is far more wood than metal and making an all metal thing often uses more wood than a simply wooden one.


Dwarves need wood for almost everything that humans do.

They probably don't make many umbrellas and they may be more efficient with their heating but I that's everything I can think of.