In China, preserving historic trees and ancient timber structures has attracted more attention from researchers and institutions. Nondestructive testing (NDT) technology has gained momentum in the application and research in recent years. This paper presents some examples of the application of NDT techniques in the protection of historic trees and ancient timber structures in China. A total of nine NDT techniques were applied, including five techniques of visual inspection, sounding, Resistograph, stress wave transmission velocity, stress wave tomography for both historic trees and ancient timber structures, two techniques of the pulling-test and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) for historic trees alone, and two techniques of acoustic emission (AE) and digital imaging for ancient timber structures. Based on field testing, there is a very good detecting effect for visual inspection and Resistograph, but sounding works unsatisfactorily. The stress wave transmission velocity is found to be excellent in screening for the internal defects of historic tree trunks, but performs badly in screening for the internal defects within the wood members of ancient timber structures. AE is less successful but digital imaging performs well in long-term monitoring and damage warning of wood structures. The stress wave tomography successfully obtains images of internal defects inside tree trunks. The anchorage of some historic trees cannot be quantitatively evaluated with the pulling test if the tree is too large. GPR’s resolution and accuracy are very low, which limit its application. Theoretical research on NDT and promotion of NDT technology are still an essential part of the work in the future.

This study verified the potential for determining the age of conifer trees using resistance microdrilling. A laboratory investigation, comparison of resistance microdrilling and counting branch whorls, and dating of old trees in a historic heritage site were conducted in this study. Two methods were proposed to determine the drilling path for resistance microdrilling. The results showed that resistance microdrilling is suitable for non-destructive testing (NDT) of living conifer trees. Moreover, the drilling path deviation must not exceed 15° to obtain reliable results. The absolute detection error of resistance microdrilling was within ± 3 years for young trees (age < 40 years old), within ± 5 years for old trees, and the relative error for all trees was less than 10%. The two methods for determining the drilling path proposed in this study are recommended for aligning the needle with the pith. For trees with a DBH exceeding the range of a resistance microdrill, the pith and age may be determined by using a “two-way drilling” in a forward and then reverse direction.