Green is in. New homes are built with reclaimed materials. Old homes are repaired with materials appropriate to the age of the home. Where do these materials come from? How about underwater?
Timber used to be cut and then floated down rivers to the mill. Some of that timber sunk on the way. Because the forests looked immense and the timber was easier to cut than reclaim, that wood was left where it sank.
After 150 years, however, the forests are no longer immense. Environmental regulations insist on replanting, but it can take anywhere from 100 to 1000 years for the trees to be the size they were when the area was still “virgin timber.” Those sunken logs are no longer an acceptable loss.
Recovering sunken lumber in the great lakes has been covered in Popular Woodworking while recovering pine in Florida has been covered in CNNMoney.com. Recovering sunken cypress, or deadhead cypress, has not been covered as much. Perhaps that is because most homeowners do not know as much about this wood.
Cypress is rot resistant and strong. The “deadhead cypress” that sank had tight growth rings that add to the strength and beauty of the wood. The huge logs from the bottom of the swamp are recovered by divers, then sliced into planks by places like GoodMillwork. Those planks have to air dry close to a year before being kiln dried for however long it takes to bring the moisture down to 8-12%. GoodMillwork then slices the planks into Millwork Architectural Moldings. That is a fancy way of saying the pretty moldings you see around the ceiling of expensive restaurants and high end homes.
Some cypress logs were infected with a fungus called stereum taxodil that starts to create hollow pockets in the log. Eventually, the whole log would be hollowed out by this fungus. If the tree was cut at a certain stage of the infestation, however, the pockmarked appearance of the planks cut from such a tree are truly breathtaking. These “pecky cypress” are highly prized. GoodMillwork is proud to carry a number of them and to be able to panel ceilings, create moldings and wainscoting, and make other architectural features out of pecky cypress for the discriminating buyer.
Cypress a little out of your range? GoodMillwork has products in over 200 species of wood in all price ranges. GoodMillwork can make any molding you need in any wood they have. Even special moldings can be matched in 24 hours. You can have your order in 5-7 days after you approve your CAD drawing.
Go green. Use reclaimed wood from GoodMillwork for your Millwork Architectural Moldings. You will be glad you did.
This article was done as part of the ComLuv/Famous Bloggers contest. GoodMillwork is a sponsor and I am doing this for extra points. Help me win by going to my article on the quest for comments and leaving a question or comment on my post. One liners don’t count, so make it good.
