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Quality Hardwoods Offer Unique Antique Reclaimed Beams
Barns serve as one of the most common sources for reclaimed wood in the United States. Barns constructed up through the early part of the 19th century were typically built using whatever trees were right there on the property. They often contain a mixed blend of oak, chestnut and other woods including poplar, hickory and pine. Beam sizes were limited to what could be moved by man and horse. The wood was either hand hewn using an axe or squared with an adze. Early settlers also recognized the oak from its European sub-species. Soon red, white, black, scarlet, willow, post and pin oak varieties were being cut and transformed into barns too.
Mill buildings throughout the southeast also provide an abundant source of reclaimed wood. Some of these buildings and complexes comprise more than a million square feet of floor space and can yield three to five times that amount of board feet of flooring. These buildings also often have no economic or reuse possibility and can be a fire hazard, as well as having varying degrees of environmental cleanup required. Reclaiming lumber and brick from retired mills puts these materials to a good use instead of a landfill.
Reclaimed lumber is popular for many reasons: the wood’s unique appearance, its contribution to green building, the history of the wood’s origins and the wood’s physical characteristics such as strength, stability and durability. Reclaimed beams can be sawn into wider planks than the harvested lumber and many companies purport that their products are more stable than newly cut wood because reclaimed wood has been exposed to changes in humidity for far longer and therefore more stable.
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