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View Full Version : How were woods selected in the old days?



Stephen Tashiro
06-18-2009, 12:37 AM
For functional things, what were the guidelines for selecting the species of wood to build them in the old days? - meaning, say, the 1800's in North America. I suppose rules like Ash or Hickory for tool handles are still followed. But what about Oak? Was that for things that had to be extremely strong vs their volume? Where weight didn't matter? Or did people just like the way Oak looks? What decided whether a floor would be pine or oak?

Neal Clayton
06-18-2009, 3:32 AM
not sure about other parts of the country, but in the south up through midwest it was build everything out of yellow pine, and if you ran out wait on the train to deliver more yellow pine.

oak and other such hardwoods were luxury items reserved for your 'good' floor and other such stuff. think of how difficult it would be to handle many oaks with hand axes/saws and mule teams due to their size. whereas yellow pine trees grow straight, relatively narrow, and with few large limbs.

that's why old growth longleaf pine is all but extinct in many states it was once native to. it was used for everything from baseboards to ship keels.

for instance in my area (built from 1895-1910) most homes and other buildings are built with yellow pine, and might have an oak living room and parlors (the parts the neighbors would see), but would be floored and trimmed upstairs and in private rooms with yellow pine as well. if unpainted, they were almost universally finished with shellac, since it's a pretty simple task to make your oak floors and your pine trim have a similar hue with a few extra coats.

Stephen Musial
06-18-2009, 7:01 AM
Around here, walnut was used for sills, and framing around windows/doors because of its resistance to decay (if it was available and cheap - mainly on farm houses that sawed the wood on the property) as well as gun stocks . Usually, they used what was most readily available locally. I've seen old houses that were framed with oak studs and fancy parlors that were finished out with fir. Fence posts were osage orange, locust or cedar. Tool handles were hickory. Beams in churches were chestnut because spiders won't spin webs near it.

It all depends on what was available locally as well as the traditions of the builders.

Julian Nicks
06-18-2009, 9:42 AM
It's all about what you had locally. This is why most houses in the midwest had oak floors and fir siding. Oak wears longer, and fir siding resists decay better. Many barns here have oak beams and even cherry floor joists.

I have found the 150-200 year old barns to be a great wealth of old growth timber. A few years ago I scored a couple 2 1/4" x 10 1/2" curly cherry floor joists for $10 each.

Stephen Tashiro
06-18-2009, 10:50 AM
With a wood like Oak, I wonder if people tried to shape it as much a possible while it was green. In fact, when would the old timers have wanted to use dried lumber?

It's very interesting to hear that yellow pine was commonly used. When I grew up in NC, both yellow pine and white pine trees grew in the country side. I didn't like to play on the yellow pines since they had a coarse bark and stiff needles. The white pines were fun to play in. But all the pine lumber that I saw used in construction was (I think) white pine. Or were my youthful impressions of lumber wrong?

Curt Harms
06-18-2009, 5:23 PM
out of oak. Had to nail it while still green and it didn't stay all that straight. OTOH, charolais cows (known to be hard on fences) would just bounce off.

Neal Clayton
06-18-2009, 6:10 PM
With a wood like Oak, I wonder if people tried to shape it as much a possible while it was green. In fact, when would the old timers have wanted to use dried lumber?

It's very interesting to hear that yellow pine was commonly used. When I grew up in NC, both yellow pine and white pine trees grew in the country side. I didn't like to play on the yellow pines since they had a coarse bark and stiff needles. The white pines were fun to play in. But all the pine lumber that I saw used in construction was (I think) white pine. Or were my youthful impressions of lumber wrong?

we don't have the white pine that you have on the east coast down south. so yellow pine was it for us.

we also have local red oak and a couple of varieties of red cedar. louisiana and mississippi had cypress in lieu of the cedar.

as for the sap'ish woods here, the river water actually aided in their drying when they were floated down to the mills. the water tended to wash the sap out of the logs, so once the river water dried out, it was as dry as modern kiln dried stuff, if not moreso.

mike holden
06-19-2009, 8:54 AM
Stephen,
Go to the library and get a copy of "A Reverence for Wood" by Eric Sloane.
The author talks a lot about choosing woods for various uses, and is a fascinating read besides.
Highly Recommended!
Mike