We have a long window bench seat in the dining room. The top was one 8-1/2 ft long board, which I decided to cut into 3 pieces to make it more flexible. The pic is the cross section of the 1 x 10-3/4″ plank. That must have been some tree. I wish that I could report that the bench was being stripped down the the bare wood, but I’m afraid it will be getting two more coats of paint instead. 🙁
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Beautiful stuff. They don't grow 'em like that any more.
Al Mollitor, Sharon MA
Do you have reasons for not swapping this beautiful plank for something more paint grade. Historical integrity? Something special could be done with this piece.
count the rings
I left the board in place in case the room is stripped at some point in the future. Plus it would take a bit of mill work to bring a regular piece of rough 5/4 down to fit the space. The whole house appears to be made of this stuff, including the full dimension 2x4 studs, and the 120 linear feet of 6x10 beams on the front porch. I have already salvaged 30 some board feet of the basement steps for a furniture project. They averaged about 20 rings per inch and were a full 1-1/16" thick.Yes, this is quarter sawn in its most pure form. Probably came from a 36" plus tree in 1910 when the house was built. I counted about 170 rings in this board.Here is one of the 2x4 rafters from this summer's garage roof project. I considered pulling them and replacing with 2x6, but there were enough nails that didn't pull to make it not worthwhile. I'm glad that more houses around here are being dismantled for the parts instead of just bulldozed. Tossing wood like this is a crime, IMHO.
My bet is the last pic. is SugarPine, could be Fir, but looks a lot like Sugarpine. Those trees grow/grew in NE and are sweet to work with.When I was building Tracker action Pipe organs, we used strips 1mm x 11mm of sugar pine for the trackers..up to 12' long always in tension, they rarely broke.
Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations.
No, all doug fir, as were the 18 ft long 1x6's as sheathing for the shakes. I had to sister a couple of the bowed rafters and it was impressive how differently the nailer treated the new vs old wood. I had to turn the pressure down about 20 lbs for the new 2x4's or else the nail went most of the way through the sheathing. Pulling nails out of those old rafters was no joy either.
nick - is this house in the NE, or what? Fir, a rare commodity out East, was freighted to Eastern Canada during WW2, to build army bases, etc. National Defense used these 'temporary' WW2 buildings until the early 80s. Sold them for scrap, luckily the outfit that got the contract salvaged most of it, reselling at a fair price for a tidy profit.
Out West, fir is ubiquitous in most old homes. Did a front door R&R a few weeks ago and kept the jamb stock: beautiful old growth fir, tight rings. Holds nails real good too.
Any you reno guys run into chestnut framing now and then? That stuff sure knows how to hang on to nails, don't it?
Few years back here in northeast Ohio I was removing 1x10 redwood clapboards from an old victorian being torn down for progress.
Some of those boards were 16ft long.
On occasion on the inside surface of the board I could still see the mill's ink stamp from Washington state.
Probably a stupid question... Is that quarter sawn?
I would guess the tree is at least 36" in diameter