I climbed to the crawlspace attic of my 1880 NE house last night to snake a cable. It resembles a neglected construction site after decades of upgrades, repair, etc (including evidence of a fire at some point). About 15% of the original attic boards had been crudely removed for insulation installation, etc. — and were just scattered on the floor.
So, I took a piece down (about 6″ wide), brushed off the dirt and quickly hand planed the surface.(See photo — original with mineral spirits). Shavings are yellow, almost orange. Looks like pine, but I’m not a wood expert at all. 1″ thick T&G. Dryer than any board I’ve every touched. Lots of splits and cracks. Lots of “character”, some good (square nail holes), some not so good (dings, dents, etc. from metal covering at one point). Based on quick internet scan, guess it’s good old NE secondary white pine attic board — but I’m totally guessing.
With this discovery, I went back up and took brief stock of the entire attic situation: all similar T&G, looks like 6 – 12/14″ widths, guessing that condition similar to sample (though most boards are full length).
My wife is a huge fan of antique pine furniture, so I’m game to try to salvage the boards and fire up the jointer and planer — but only if it’s worth the effort.
Could really benefit from experience of others:
What kind of wood do I have?
How will it look after restoration (i.e. Is this worth the effort)?
How likely is it that I can remove it without destroying it (cracks from dryness, etc)
And, if it’s worth the effort, thoughts on technique?
Thanks for enduring this long post. I can’t tell if I have a treasure in the attic or a useless time sink.
Ken
Replies
Diagnosis from afar is difficult. I think you need to jusdge for yourself whether the wood is workable. For what it's worth, I can't imagine that it is not.
I assume it's pine, but you didn't mention any smell when planing it and I'd be surprised if it was pine and didn't give off a deistinctive (rather nice) smell when worked.
If the wood turns you on, you should go for it.
Be aware that in many older, balloon-framed buildings, the attic floor boards are structural elements acting as rafter ties. Removing them could adversely affect the structural integrity of the roof/walls. If you do remove them, replace them as you go to avoid the walls bowing.
Mike Hennessy
Pittsburgh, PA
I had a bunch of pine boards from the 1950's in my house when I bought it about 10 years ago. I surfaced them and squared 'em up, they ended up being really nice boards that I put to good use. I also bought a load of timbers and 2x12s reclaimed from a deconstructed 1900 structure, all old growth douglas fir. That wood was really special, the quarter sawn 2x12s (30'foot long!) were just stunning.
Old growth pine, doug fir, redwood, etc. is so radically different than what you get today that it's like a completely different species.
I have a bunch of old southern yellow pine flooring. Narrow boards about 2 1/2". Once cleaned up that stuff is beautiful. Very tight growth rings and the wood is very hard. I have to glue up a bunch at a time to make anything wide but for small boxes and trays and such it works out very nicely. The stuff you have looks like it could be SYP not sure. I know that a lot of it was shipped up to the northeast for construction lumber but whatever it is it looks pretty good I sure would use it for something. It gives a person a good feeling when you give old wood a new life.
ZABO
Edited 4/17/2009 5:13 pm ET by Zabo2
woodman
It really depends on where you get it from..
Here in the midwest we still have some old growth trees around.. they have the same charctieristics of all old growth.. extremely tight grain and straight trunks which go on forever..
Managed forests will not produce that sort of wood. Because the trees are planted/culled to produce maximum growth.. Old growth is the way it is because it has to fight for sunlight and nutriants..
Most of my home was built with old growth timbers, some were growing before the declaration of indepence was written..
Looking at photos is probably misleading me, but those boards do not look like "old growth" pine, and they don't look like heart pine.
Oddly enough, they look very similar to the kind of southern yellow pine that can be bought today -- with the possible exception of their grade, which appears to be better than #1.
Thanks to all for trying to help me -- seems like we still have a bit of a mystery.Couple of things:1. I don't care about the outcome -- if the boards are junk, that's fine (and saves a bunch of work).2. I'm pretty sure these are very old boards, possibly original to the house (but please feel free to challenge that assumption). Why? A. They are located in the central part of the house that is clearly original construction. B. Biggest potential clue: they are attached to the joists with square head and body iron nails (which I understand from web research dates pre 1890). C. +1" thickness for clearly secondary boards3. I shouldn't have suggested the species of wood -- I actually have no idea other than my guessing -- virtually anything is possible. Beyond the pictures, biggest clue to my eye remains the highly colored shavings (and BTW, no obvious smell of pine).I welcome anyone's additional thoughts and am glad to provide add'l information or post add'l photos if that would help.Thanks.(And many thanks to the poster who reminded me that these boards probably tie the joists is the attic together)
Being a woman of your wife's persuasion of loving old pine furniture, I think your boards are gorgeous. And it sure looks like pine to me.Gretchen
You may well have eastern white pine heartwood boards. I lucked into an old-growth eastern white pine flitch-cut stack a couple of years ago, and it looks radically different than the white pine one finds in home centers.
Specifically, there's a clearly delineated stripe of white sapwood on both sides of each board around 3" wide. The rest of the boards are pinkish-red heartwood, and virtually no early/late wood rings are visible in it - the best description I can give it is that it looks a little like reddish pear wood, except, of course, far softer.
I wrote an article for SAPFM's American Period Furniture journal last year about exposing various woods to UV to darken them without using stains or dyes, and some of this wood went into the test. The result after UV exposure was that the heartwood definitely took on an orangish hue, and darkend considerably.
While I was working with UV, the basics to the chemical reaction occuring in the wood samples was oxidation - greatly accelerated by sunlight. I would expect that the temperature in your attic in the summer would also greatly accelerate oxidation over (for example) wall or floorboards elsewhere in the house. Over a 120 year time span, I would also expect that seasonal cooking to remove most of the volatile compounds that make pine smell the way it does.
Heart pine attic boards here in the South still smell like resin after 100 years baking in an attic, but that's yellow pine, and even when freshly cut, white pine has a much subtler smell to it.
the color is similar to red pine however the lack of pine smell indicates they well may be something other.. Not particularly old growth either, the rings are too far apart.. that doesn't mean they aren't old growth but that they may have been grown someplace where the trees weren't in competition with others and thus allowing the wide growth rings..
six inch wide boards are nothing special..
I have many boards 22 inches wide which is as wide as my sawmill can saw with a 54 inch blade.
However I know of a double bladed mill (over/under) which will allow me to get boards up to 46 inches wide.
There is even supposed to be a band saw mill in Wisconsin capable of sawing up to 54 inches wide..
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled