I have 3 really old trees that I think are ash, and I think are full of burl. Looking for advice on what it is, and what to do with it. It won’t let me load very large photos so not sure if you can tell much from these…
A separate side question: I have an old house I’m restoring, and have piles of old rough cut lumber from the 1890’s and early 1900’s. I was planning on using it to frame where needed, but someone mentioned that the old lumber is pretty sought after and may be worth selling and buying modern lumber. Anyone know if there is any truth to this, and where I find the right people interested in it?
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Yes and no. Is it lumber or recycled? What type(s) of wood? Dimensions? Where are you? Where and how was it kept for the last 130 years? I'm assuming it's lumber from your renovation otherwise how would you know it's age?
It’s lumber, used to frame the inside of the house. There are a bunch of 2x4 of various lengths up to about 16’ and 2x8x16’s used for floor joists. It was all interior lumber and in great shape, some of the floor joists are rotted on the last foot where they were set on the one side, which is why I had to take them out.
It’s in Utah, and yes it’s all from the renovation. The floor joists and some of the 2x4’s were from the original construction in 1890’s. A lot of the rest were from the 1930’s when they lowers the 10’ ceilings to 8’.
I’m not real sure on the type of wood, a lot of it from the 1930’s almost looks like a red cedar? The older stuff is probably a type of pine.
Speaking in general terms, it is not wise to use old timber for framing. It can be the right stuff, but it is also often past its best and lacks features such as treatments to protect against rot and insect attack (may not be an issue where you live)
The value of the reclaimed timber will depend on too many factors to say if it is worth more than construction lumber, but wider, thicker longer and cleaner timbers are better. If it is close-grained it is worth more than open and of course some species are worth more than others. In NZ for instance, many old houses were framed in Rimu, which is a local softwood - it is highly sought after as a timber as it can take hundreds of years to develop much in the way of heartwood, so recycled beams which contain the heart are valuable indeed. If you have timber that is not easily available anywhere else then it may be particularly valuable. If it's pine, not quite so much.
Another less obvious factor is how much recycled furniture you see being sold - if it is fashionable to use recycled wood, the price is higher - people where I am actually pay way more for recycled stuff than new timber. If people are more in favour of the clean look where you live then it is probably firewood.
Either way, I'd burn it before I used it in a rebuild.
That's burl, but it's really kind of overrun with those small branches, and part of a fence that it's grown around.
It's not worth anything as lumber, but a wood turner would love to get ahold of it if you cut it down.
Thanks for the responses. I wasn’t planning on using the tree as lumber, was thinking more about having something made out of it. there are 2 others like that one, about 4-5 feet in diameter (rare to be that big where I’m from) that are full of burl.
Taking into account where your located and the knarly appearance of those trees and without leaves to help identify them and their obvious age have you considered that they might be cottonwoods? The bark would suggest maybe they are. I don't know what you can do with cottonwood but with that said you can turn anything.
Something to consider ,that's a fence running through that ancient tree. Often in original deeds when property was divided trees were used to designate boundary lines. Like: From a cottonwood at the northeast corner ....etc. Property was often sold with a handshake and a guess at the acerage rather than an actual proper survey. First you had to find a surveyor, second you would have to pay him! Maybe the land was sold in exchange for a cow , you never know. As long as the deal existed in memory or oral history those trees were never touched. There may be a historical reason to leave those trees be. I'd be making a trip to the county recorder before I'd remove those trees.
The trees separate my yard from the field behind my house, which I own. You make good point, in this case I own the property all around them. I purchased this property about 6 months ago, was owned by my late grandma since 1947, so went through all the surveying just recently.
I had wondered about them being cottonwoods, but the bark doesn’t seem to be as thick as other ones in the area. There are smaller ash trees further along the fence line, and the bark on the branches coming off of the ugly mess looks more like those. I’ve been around those trees for years and never really paid attention to them… I got a lathe recently and have started caring more about that kind of thing. I might have to wait until the leaves come on to figure it out.
Using old,100 year old lumber for your building project? If it's inspected work you might have some trouble there. Inspectors like to see those grade stamps but otherwise , assuming that it's clean and free of vermin it's has to be better than the 2nd ,3rd or 4th growth framing lumber that you buy today. Rough sawn you might want to replane to get a consistent dimension. If its something like douglas fir it will probably be super hard and you might have to pilot drill to nail. In response to RS 's comments I've built in NZ and Douglas fir (which was referred to as "Oregon " there) was a preferred building material but there is a difference. You get some really beautiful stuff! The very best material goes to the export market so consequently you get better quality building lumber than I could purchase here commercially even though I can step out my door and see Douglas Fir growing. Standard framing lumber here is not treated.
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