In the attached photo, at the top is what lumber dealers call longleaf pine. It is from a joist that came from an old warehouse, probably at least 60 years old. I’ve got about 140 bf of it. Nice stuff once I cut away all the nails and useless parts. Below it in the photo is what my local lumber yard sells as southern yellow pine, just a common construction 2 x 6. When I googled “longleaf pine” it says it is another name for southern yellow pine and goes on to describe the locations, needle shape, wood use, etc. Are these the same species? If so, why the dense rings on the older wood vs what is sold today? Have the old trees been harvested to extinction? I’ve also heard longleaf pine referred to as “heart pine” – same questions. Hope someone can clear all this up for me – life is tough enough without being able to talk smart about pine lumber.
Replies
Nice and heavy too I'll bet.
And the aroma when it's cut...arch-i-crumba! Someone ought to find a way to bottle that and sell it.
I save all I can get.
Edited 11/15/2007 6:10 pm ET by rez
I love that smell. Love the smell of Turpentine too.
I've actually been thinking about a side business of men's "beauty" products. Things like hand cream for seriously dry hands, and aftershave that smells like freshly cut cedar. You just gave me an idea....
Do you like that Greek drink (who's name is escaping me at the moment) too? Not Ouzo, the other one.
Retsina?
Yes! That's it.
Ritsina is good wif orange juice.
it's pretty cool when you cut something that
A. was grow'n when Columbus got here
B. still smells like it was cut down yesterday
it's pretty neat stuff i have a few 12x16 beams that are 18ft long... they rested on cast iron plates on the top of 16x16 posts... (all heart wood) but the building was used as a refrigerated warehouse at one time cause'n rot where they rested on the iron... so i have to pull and replace them (happened to have some 6x 16 x20' that i doubbled up... for replacement) still have 20 or so of those...
i kept the ones with rot on the ends... 6 or so... just need to clean em up & find a use for em... pretty common still around here to come up with some 3 x16 full joists heart pine... sometimes 20-24 ft long...
only people like use can make economic sense out of use'n em...
i make alot of my window trim out of recut heart pine... all it needs is a little oil for a finish... and it's some nice stuff..
we spent over an hour one day try'n to count the rings on a 12x16 heart pine beam that i had to cut 9 ft out of... never even got close to count'n em all... i have that 12 x 16 x9' beam where i can see it everyday... waiting to be "inspired" so i can put it to use
p
http://www.heartpine.com/woods/old_growth.shtml
Jeff
Edited 11/15/2007 11:50 pm ET by Jeff_Clarke
The difference is old growth verses plantation grown. There isn't much old growth left and hopefully no more will be felled. The plantaion is quickly grown and there growth rings show this by being farther apart.
Old growth is very dense and when gotten the way you did acceptable to use. I doubt pine is will be put on the endangered list any time soon tho.
Longleaf, or "heart" pine, or "antique heart pine" is all gone - trees were gone 75 years ago. Good book http://www.amazon.com/Ecology-Cracker-Childhood-World-Home/dp/1571312471 talks about it. Great gal wrote it - she and I were both HS senior STAR students for our respective GA regions; she in 1980, a year before me. Didn't meet her 'til 25 years later
Like Rez, I keep what I find or remove. Wonderful to work with - I sometimes think of it as machining aluminum. Modern yellow pine is nice and sturdy, but farmed and not the same.
Forrest - 1886 and 1917 heart pine frame, floors, & all millwork; modern yellow pine shake (LifePine) roof
I saw Janisse Ray do a reading/talk in Missoula, MT. It was hugely compelling. I may have even shed a tear.
I think she's HOT! DW could tell.
Forrest
http://www.cybis.se/forfun/dendro/skogen/index.htm
Some old pines
Awesome
So what are the trees all arond N. GA? All of the tree ID books I've read say Longleaf Pine is synonmous with SYP. The descriptions of Longleaf are pretty accurate to what's growing here.
Not saying the wood in the OP is anything close qulaity-wise to what's growing here though or available though lumeryard.
I've even started keeping the better pieces of t&g flooring if I can get them up with wrecking them too bad.
Sometimes they seem pretty dried out but dang, after 100years or so you'd be too.
All the casing for the bookcases and cabinets and door frames in my library are old flooring run through a shaper.
Forrest
ok ok I've a pile waiting for me in an old upstairs bath total gut I pulled out yesterday. Dry as a bone tho'.
The subfloor under the original floor is interesting as I noticed it was laid with cut nails.
on a side note the attic has serious batsh!d on the floor directly under the peaks. Freakin' could measure the depth of some of the piles with a rule.
be holy shid Batman!
Long leaf pine was a very good flooring wood in its time. Its pretty tough.
willim,
Long leaf pine is a distinct species,Pinus palustris, but it is included with the SYP group. I get to work with a lot of this great wood. Just got a load of 10x12 and smaller beams to do some framing with. Got some 10x12 fir also.
Having fun.
KK
Longleaf Pine is great wood and is a very interesting tree, but it is just one of the "Southern Yellow Pines" (Shortleaf, Loblolly and Slash Pine are the other common species). Heart Pine is from the center of old, mature trees of any of these pines. The heartwood has a darker color from resins deposited in them and are harder and relatively decay resistant.
Most modern, plantation grown, pines are harvested before they are old enough to even develop heartwood. The wood is grown faster and has far fewer growth rings resulting in softer, lighter, weaker wood.
The Old Growth conditions (more trees crowded together) caused intense competition for nutrients and especially sunlight. This resulted in slow growth (lots of small growth rings) and dense, hard and strong wood with few knots.
Longleaf Pine is a fire adapted species. Seedlings look like a dense tuft of grass and remain looking like a clump of grass for several years...all the while they grow extensive root systems and store up food for a surge of growth that turns the stunted seedling into a gangly sapling growing several feet tall in a single season.
The "grass" phase protects the tree from fire in a moist green covering--able to resist fire damage from surface fire. The sudden surge upward in the sapling phase lifts the trees sensative buds above the threat of grass fires.
More info:
http://www.southernpine.com/expert/index.pl?leafcode=23
That dang heart pine puts a hurtin on the sinuses that I know all too well. Like breathing Turpentine.Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
"If you want something you've never had, do something you've never done"
It's hard on the blades too what with all that pitch.Hey, by the way, I looked for that hot plate for burning paint I wanted to give ya, and I realized I gave it to my BIL some years back and when asked he told me he passed it on to a friend of his. Sorry. Maybe it'll eventually make it's way to you. It's got a chunk out of the lower part of the handle which has my initials carved on it.
No worries, but thanks fer lookin.
The worst of the problem is done, found a crew that could really get it done.Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
"If you want something you've never had, do something you've never done"
Basswood, that was a great explanation.
One of my pet peeves is when folks use the term "Heart Pine" as if it's a specific species.
Allen
Thanks,I have a Forest Ecology B.S. degree...these discussions are one of the few times I get to put some of that learnin' to use...though I do use that knowledge as it applies to my carpentry work each day.When I saw the thread title "Pinus palustris" popped into my head...from a dendrology class 25 years ago.You are right about the abuse of the term "heart pine."Cheers,BW
Longleaf is a sub species of Southern Yellow Pine. Right now, the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service has a Conservation Reserve Program to support the Longleaf Pine Initiative. I'm planting 28 acres of longleaf pines next month. The process has taken about a year.
We've sprayed herbicide bands and scalped the fields. They will pay me $100 an acre at first, which comes no where near covering my costs. Then, for 15 years, they will pay me the going rate for land rent in Southwest Georgia. I'm taking pasture land and planting pines. The longleaf seedlings are container-grown, and rather expensive compared to slash pine.
Longleaf is a slow growing variety, which is where those tight annual rings come from. It's definitely a long-term investment. I may see one thinning, but my kids will be the ones to benefit from this.
I see it as stewardship of the land. I can hunt on the land and I don't have to worry about a tenent farmer abusing the soil or tearing up my fences.
I'll let you guys know how it goes.
Greg
Thank you for doing that. It is a wonderful wood
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Thanks, Paul. I guess I'm taking care of my carbon footprint, plus my wife and kids, and my grandkids, and great-grandkids . . .
; > )
Greg
And leaving a legacy of quality to boot.Now that I have few minutes, let's see if I have some photos of heart pine to add to the discussion.......I was amazed in my search how many of the photos I have in all these nice homes of all the trim work, I never really took many photos of the floor itself. It always shows as just a dark spot at the bottom of a photo of something else.Second one has a lot of sapwood mixed grades and is closer to the best you could get with a SYP nowdays. The first photo is close to what most of our clear vertical grain with 12-30+ growth rings per inch
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Greg , The man who did this carving planted much of his acreage here in trees suitable for wood carving. He died within the last few years . My understanding is that he left it as a legacy for wood carvers. I did some work for him many years ago and own a small carving of his that he gave me as a gift. Amazing guy. http://www.salemhistory.net/culture/images/art_teak_screen.jpg
They can't get your Goat if you don't tell them where it is hidden.
Wow. And that's a large piece ! Thanks.
Greg
Greg,Longleaf Pine is not a sub-species of SYP. Longleaf pine is one of the SYP species--it is a species in its' own right. Nice to hear about your pine planting project. Very cool.Longleaf pine stands were some of the last Old Growth in the South. The advent of steel hull ships in the late 1800's and early 1900's caused a steep decline in demand for Naval Stores. Up 'til that time the large old Longleaf Pines had more value alive than dead.Longleaf Pine and Slash Pine stands were spared the ax and tapped much like the Sugar Maple in my neck of the woods, except for turpentine and pine tar used to make wooden ships watertight.Some of those last remaining stands of Old Growth fell as recently as the 1950's. Spared for centuries, only to drop ironically as iron replaced wood.
Thanks for clearing up the speciation
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Nice to know I started such a lengthy and lively discussion.
Just as sort of a recap: I take it that longleaf pine is its own species within a group of pines referred to as southern yellow. There are longleaf pines being grown now but they are plantation grown, widely spaced and harvested much earlier than in old days. Longleaf pine from long ago, all cut by now, grew wild, usually in dense stands, slow growing which made them dense and hard, often many, many years old when cut. The wood looks good, smells good - too bad it's gets more and more expensive as it gets harder to find. Thanks to all for the info.
What a shame what we've done to our forests. And to think it's still happening in the wild rain forests in South America and other tropical areas. One mahogany tree can bring tens of thousands of dollars to the cutters, more to the middlemen as it moves to market and sells to American and European woodworkers. When it's gone, it's gone for good. I recently made my last mahogany door for an insistant client. Am I just being a bed-wetter here or is there a real crisis in supplying our industry with exotics?
Thanks again to all.
Am I just being a bed-wetter here or is there a real crisis in supplying our industry with exotics?
The theory goes that the trees are going to be cut down in the name of progress anyway, to make way for farming/roads/urban development. Rainforest soil is extremely poor, so it doesn't last long as farmland. By purchasing Forest Stewardship Council-certified rainforest wood, which I believe is plantation grown, at least there will be some trees--not the old-growth stuff, just as the old-growth stuff here is pretty much gone--but trees anyway. The alternative is desert or buildins.
good summation.For clarification, I read once that there are some old ones standing in a preseve someplace in Appalachia.
Also, I don't even know if any of the newer plantation grown are being harvested yet, other than sporadically as thinnings as a stand grows up.
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this is some of best stuff I've read all week. Thanks for giving me very good reason for taking heart.
Did you find some heart pine in your old place?My guess is that at the ege of it in this location, it was all white pine, local.
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Always thought it was a southern tree. Yes, old growth, some still standing, were/are mostly pine. The wood salvaged from old Cape is strong but so rough and gucky, it's hard telling what it is. We'll see when we clean it up.Have kept lots of old pines and apple trees, also 150 year old cedar, equal age spruce but sadly the giant maple by the road had to be felled. It is curing, will not become firewood but a bench, table top, stools and anything else it wants. Several tall ash on property also, but couple of elms succumbed to Dutch Elm disease years ago, are now sprawled across creek bed as habitat for various critters.Farmhouse in No. ME (sold years ago) was completely outfitted with old growth wood, mostly maple. Panel doors, all woodwork and trim, stairs. A few floors were unique with pattern like large parquet of various shades, up to 2 inches thick - all hardwood, over a softwood subfloor.
Those features, a trout brook, 8 huge living maples and a couple apple trees, plus a terrific pantry cinched the deal when we were looking for a place years ago. Sad to say the old Victorian has fallen on hard times but it's home to lots of kids.
I5t is a southern TREE. I meant to be asking whether you have any of the WOOD at your place.A lot of the bigger pl;aces built a hundred years or so ago used millwork from down south further along the Atlantic coast. but the smaller places and the older ones like yours were usually built with the local white pine and spruce framing, some red pine.
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Gotcha. Now, is it generally assumed that old growth softwood timber, no matter its region of origin, is comparable in durability. The distinctive pattern and odor of the longleaf pine is wonderful. But, as far as longlasting qualities and workability, would not pine cut in early part of 20th C and earlier, be similar?
No.old longleaf is denser than new longleaf.Old STP is denser than plantation grown SYPand old virgin white pine is going to be denser than newly harvested white pine.but simply being virgin growth does not overcome the species differences.To put it into your cook and gardening background - There are new types of corn that are very sweet and even keep that sweetness instead of turning it into starch. This makes newer corn on the cob more satisfying than what I grew up with.There are also new ways of growing tomatoes, such as hothouse growing ( which ruins the taste, IMO) that produces different palatability compared to the old heirloom varieties that are sometimes ugly to look at.In this example of the new corn being better and the new tomatoes being worse from changes over the centuries, neither kind jumps a special barrier . You only compare the change within the species.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
Old Growth, new growth all of that is still dependent on RATE of growth, and that is determined by competition.
As the natural (not plantation) "virgin" forests cycle from deciduous to coniferous, the amount of sunlight varied the rate of growth.
Competition for water in densly crowded setting also meant less actual summer wood being produced and what was, was compressed even tighter by the next few decades being added.
Extremely wet yrs can be spotted in just about any tree as can the drought yrs.
It is ironic in a way that the same slow growth rate that makes SYP a superior board than one fast grown, it is the opposite in a species such as Red Oak, the tighter the rings the more "brash" and brittle the sample is, faster , wider rings mean more flex and give...strength.Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
"If you want something you've never had, do something you've never done"
I'm not trying to jump species here guys. Without putting too fine a point on it, I was wondering if old growth Eastern white pine, as I assume was used in my little cape, was comparable in usefulness and durability of longleaf pine. But hey, ain't no big deal, it has held up 100-200 years and still serves, so I'm happy.By the way, I have to live 6 months a year in Palm Beach - believe me I don't judge quality by appearance, only. Genetically engineered food does look more presentable, may have a longer shelf life and actually taste better than certain predecessors. This is not the forum to debate the pros and cons of tampering with human food.By the way, I didn't salvage all the old wood, windows and hardware to save $$. That was a bonus. The satisfaction goes beyond the financial. I hate waste. The uniqueness and quirkiness, the history, and general superior quality make reusing and restoring are more than just practical. I just love reading that so many revere trees. Gives me hope.
I had an interesting development with my 28 acres of Longleaf Pines that I thought you might all be interested in - a sign of the times, I suppose.
I've received a notice of interest in buying my "Carbon Sequestration", aka carbon offsets, carbon trading, carbon credits - there is now a Chicago Climate Exchange, and I guess that carbon credits are being actively traded. Apparently my carbon credits are of interest to industries that must offset their carbon production.
My Forest Management Consultants have advised me not to sell - they say that there is no trade policy in place, the contract commitments are lengthy, and the market is poor. Here in the U.S., credits are being valued at approximately $2 to $6, but in Europe, they're trading in the mid-$20 range. What actually constitutes a measurable "credit", I don't know.
What a world we live in !
Greg
Check the information on river recovered pine and cypress. The wood is available after being pulled from Florida rivers where it sank (sinkers they were called). One source that has a web site is Goodwin, http://www.HeartPine.com.
Cool stuff but it doesn't have enough character for me. I mean it has historical character but no mineral streaks or contrasts like hickory for instance.