Anyone use reclaimed wood?

[Rich Riddle]

I am looking at building a workbench after the new year and picking a design. The thought of reclaimed wood is appealing but it seems as though most these folks on the Internet selling it have it priced to the point where it's simply much easier and cheaper to use new wood. Any of you folks have luck finding reclaimed wood at a decent price?

[William Nimmo]

I find that wood that escapes the dumpster is priced at double what new wood costs.
Go figure

[Rich Engelhardt]

Keep scanning the free stuff on craig's list.

[Mel Fulks]

Yep. But doesn't hurt to look for deals at tear down sites. Our local RESTORE has deals on common donated 2 bys. As an example of how things can change ,about 1960 a guy I used to work for got a lot of old heart pine timbers from a school that was being torn down just by asking for it. Now the HP dealers put in bids for tearing down buildings ,carefully figuring salvage value of a number or materials.

[Paul Incognito]

If you have a friend in the construction industry, let them know what you're looking for. They usually dumpster old floor joists and beams when doing a rehab. Most folks would rather have you haul it away than pay for disposal. Just be aware that there will be nails and other goodies hidden in the wood that will ruin planer blades. Get a good metal detector.
PI

[Rich Riddle]

Keep scanning the free stuff on craig's list.

Funny you should say that. There is two advertisements. One has a guy who wants you to spend two weeks cleaning out his storage unit and organizing it for a few boards that look like good candidates to make bows. The other is someone who wants you to completely disassemble his metal shed but he won't charge you for your time to take it apart.

[scott spencer]

A high percentage of my projects over the last 10 years have used reclaimed wood in some form or another. I've been given some, won some, bought some, and have repurposed a lot of curbside pieces. You don't need to specifically buy reclaimed lumber from a seller.

[Keith Westfall]

Sometimes you get lucky with wood from pallets... - not always :eek:

[Tai Fu]

So why are reclaimed wood double the cost of new wood? Isn't the idea to reuse old wood to save the trees? I can see risks being nails and stuff inside but the price they're charging for reclaimed wood is just ridiculous. I can actually buy exotic wood cheaper than reclaimed pine.

[Mike Cutler]

So why are reclaimed wood double the cost of new wood? Isn't the idea to reuse old wood to save the trees? I can see risks being nails and stuff inside but the price they're charging for reclaimed wood is just ridiculous. I can actually buy exotic wood cheaper than reclaimed pine.

For some reason, people classify it with some type of an "antique" status.
Some of the "older" woods are worth looking at and possibly paying for, but it's kind of selective.
Old Hemlock beams, White oak barn board, Qsawn heart pine and there are others.Sometimes the wood is salvageable and has value only for period authentic restorations. Most though, should just go through the wood stove.

My house was built with rough cut lumber circa 1920, and believe me, there's a lot to be said for a "modern" 2x4, or 2x6. ;)

[Rich Riddle]

So why are reclaimed wood double the cost of new wood? Isn't the idea to reuse old wood to save the trees? I can see risks being nails and stuff inside but the price they're charging for reclaimed wood is just ridiculous. I can actually buy exotic wood cheaper than reclaimed pine.
You are correct. I have already decided to simply purchase new wood. It would cost too much time to try to find the reclaimed wood and then there is the time to mill it, etc. I told the three dealers my decision and they seemed surprised. I told them it was a simple cost/benefit decision. The cost of using reclaimed wood outweighed the benefit of using it.

[Mike Carino]

Right now we`re building a house out of it. It`s a bunch of junk....twisted, split all to hell, cupped you name the defect it has it. It`s expensive as hell but people that have more money than sense love it. The house is going for several million.

[Dave Quignon]

I got really blessed by a guy who gave me about 1300 feet of 1" oak flooring. He pulled in out of a TJ Friday's, took it home, pulled 95% of the nails, stored it for 2 years and then gave it to me. It takes a lot of milling, but it is beautiful red oak. So there are opportunities out there, it is about being in the right place and the right time.

[Tai Fu]

I don't care how old it is, pine is pine and they aren't worth 10% of what people are asking. If it's reclaimed Brazilian rosewood, then I'll bite.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

I salvaged two 46' Douglas fir sailboat masts from a wrecked sailboat. We towed them behind our kayaks from an offshore cay. I sawed them into 20' sections to get them home. Each section weighed about 250 pounds. It was quite a task to get good lumber from it. I made a racing SUP out of it to let the wood remain at sea where it belonged. I still have 3/4 of the wood left and it will go to parts for a 6m Whaler sailboat and a skin on frame kayak.


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[John Coloccia]

people that have more money than sense love it

And that right there says it all. This is limousine recycling, plain and simple. The cost effective way to reclaim wood is as mentioned: Either go onsite where they're tearing down something like a barn or grab old furniture. Forget the boutique dealers. They're for suckers who don't know any better.

[Peter Quinn]

We've been using a study supply of "reclaimed" lumber at work, its a popular look if its old and riddled with nail or bullet holes, and its a popular buzz word among green beans and their designers. Oh, its a green alternative! Sure, a crew uses countless amounts of diesel in equipment and generators to pull the stuff and process/remove from site, than countless more hours and electricity removing the nails and inclusions the wood has encountered over its life, then another crew has to kiln dry this material just as if new wood….electric kiln….or gas…more energy….then another crew of millwrights spends twice the time (versus using new FAS lumber) milling/piecing this pile of junk into a behemoth of a door, or mantle, or what ever quasi industrial looking artifice….they must run a really interesting formula to determine this endeavor amounts to "green" activity just because you didn't cut down a tree to do it. The prices may or may not be related to actual costs in this market, but I suspect often they are to some degree, and that it is in fact easier, cheaper, and far more expeditious just to use new lumber for most projects. All that said, there are occasional reclaimed opportunities available, they seem to appear organically and randomly, and you almost always have to be in the right place at the right time for them to make economic sense. Neighbor rips a bunch of old stud walls out in a remodel, agrees to let you cull the dumpster….you get a pile of old DF studs, hard as nails and often with few nails along the length….great bench top material. Your labor makes the arrangement make sense. But buying from some guy on the internet, almost always too much of his labor involved, and too much money. Regular people aren't going to pay you $15/bf for #2 common lumber that came from a dumpster, just too practical, money is too scarce to spend it so foolishly. A person has to have a lot of money before its use ceases to matter to that extent, so thats who you are bidding against in the "reclaimed" market. More money than brains, probably being handled by a third party designer or architect. I see tables on Etsy, look like a clumsy carpenter ripped down their grandma's screen porch and cobbled it into furniture, asking thousands of dollars for the privilege to own something that looks like it belongs on the side of the road with a free sign on it. Then others have very reasonably priced and decent looking objects made from "reclaimed" material. Hmmm.

Beyond the reclaimed market is the pure "antique" market, they sell this as you getting a piece of a bygone era, old growth logs no longer available in your lifetime, precious unearthed gems to pay dearly for. And if you want a floor or table top or mantle that looks like you spared it from a dumpster but has tighter growth rings in and around the knots, splits, cracks, peg holes, mortises, ring shake, wane and other defects inherent in sawing old beams into boards, then that might be just the thing to use. Culturally its a money laundering scheme. The mob takes dirty money and makes it "good" by laundering. Use "antique reclaimed beams" to make your beach house on the Vineyard or mountain home near the slops in Vale look instantly old, and that makes the new money that paid for it instantly old too. And what could be more green than taking into account all the steps mentioned above to turn reclaimed things into usable lumber, then add to that a long ride on a flatbed followed by a ferry ride out to some island getaway? Oh, you could just use trees air dried from the property or cut locally for the construction, but that would be too obvious…..end rant.

All that said I made an entry door and set of large knee brackets out of "reclaimed" lumber this past summer for my garage/barn build. The bracket material was 10/4 cypress flooring planks my grandfather ripped form the old thread mill where he worked when it closed in the 1950's, the door was primarily made from the dumpster at work. One piece at a time…didn't cost me a dime…..my family was way ahead of the curve on the reclaimed trend, by like 60 years, and we were not alone in it, used to be called "the frugal yankee approach to creative repurposing". Almost perverse the direction its gone.

[Jim Andrew]

I have this dream that my son will move home from LA, where he is a musician, and we will build him a home from recycled material I have collected over the last few years. There was a big wind storm here, and I cleaned up what was left of a 4000 sf barn, and near that location a couple sheds, one which had the roof replaced about a year before. The lucky thing was the metal was screwed on, and that made removing it easy. Last year I took down a old church. I have this lumber stored in sheds at the farm, hope the kid decides to move home before I get too decrepit to handle this project. Otherwise maybe my kids will market this stuff on ebay.

[Tai Fu]

My workbench top is made from reclaimed beech floor board. I got it for free when a neighbor was doing remodeling. It's a LOT of work but it was free wood.

[Rick Potter]

Rich,

Perhaps you can find some old workbench(s) on CL. I have seen several that people sold cheap, because that is all they were worth, but they were made of old wood that might be useable for you.

You might have good luck looking under 'garage sales' or the like.
I have gotten some useable wood from old tables or headboards at thrift stores.

Rick Potter

[Frank Drew]

I don't care how old it is, pine is pine and they aren't worth 10% of what people are asking.

The last time I bought Heart Pine (called Old Pine around here), it was double the price of Mahogany, but those were prime boards and Heart Pine can be one of the most attractive woods available, particularly for architectural millwork. Some boards are just sensationally colored. And they ain't makin' no more!

[glenn bradley]

If I have come across wood that is suitable and have collected enough to do something, I do it. I do not know how viable an effort to go with 'reclaimed' material would turn out, from a standing start, in my area. There has been a surge of scheisters on the net hawking "super rare, unbelievably valuable, antique, etc." lumber. These are the cousins of the folks who made out selling trashed or partial handplanes as antiques :D. Considering a decent commercial workbench can run up to $2000 I would not worry about a few hundred dollars for some decent parts and materiel.

[Rich Riddle]

Peter, thanks for that detailed information. Went to some in-law's house for the holiday and one of the distant family members was discussing just what you typed. He was all excited about spending thousands on something I would toss in a dumpster. I suspect they market this to a very specific small group of folks.

[Dick Brown]

Old Pallets sometimes hide awesome wood.This urn was made from the ugliest old pallet you ever saw.

[Larry Edgerton]

We've been using a study supply of "reclaimed" lumber at work, its a popular look if its old and riddled with nail or bullet holes, and its a popular buzz word among green beans and their designers. Oh, its a green alternative! Sure, a crew uses countless amounts of diesel in equipment and generators to pull the stuff and process/remove from site, than countless more hours and electricity removing the nails and inclusions the wood has encountered over its life, then another crew has to kiln dry this material just as if new wood….electric kiln….or gas…more energy….then another crew of millwrights spends twice the time (versus using new FAS lumber) milling/piecing this pile of junk into a behemoth of a door, or mantle, or what ever quasi industrial looking artifice….they must run a really interesting formula to determine this endeavor amounts to "green" activity just because you didn't cut down a tree to do it. The prices may or may not be related to actual costs in this market, but I suspect often they are to some degree, and that it is in fact easier, cheaper, and far more expeditious just to use new lumber for most projects. All that said, there are occasional reclaimed opportunities available, they seem to appear organically and randomly, and you almost always have to be in the right place at the right time for them to make economic sense. Neighbor rips a bunch of old stud walls out in a remodel, agrees to let you cull the dumpster….you get a pile of old DF studs, hard as nails and often with few nails along the length….great bench top material. Your labor makes the arrangement make sense. But buying from some guy on the internet, almost always too much of his labor involved, and too much money. Regular people aren't going to pay you $15/bf for #2 common lumber that came from a dumpster, just too practical, money is too scarce to spend it so foolishly. A person has to have a lot of money before its use ceases to matter to that extent, so thats who you are bidding against in the "reclaimed" market. More money than brains, probably being handled by a third party designer or architect. I see tables on Etsy, look like a clumsy carpenter ripped down their grandma's screen porch and cobbled it into furniture, asking thousands of dollars for the privilege to own something that looks like it belongs on the side of the road with a free sign on it. Then others have very reasonably priced and decent looking objects made from "reclaimed" material. Hmmm.

Beyond the reclaimed market is the pure "antique" market, they sell this as you getting a piece of a bygone era, old growth logs no longer available in your lifetime, precious unearthed gems to pay dearly for. And if you want a floor or table top or mantle that looks like you spared it from a dumpster but has tighter growth rings in and around the knots, splits, cracks, peg holes, mortises, ring shake, wane and other defects inherent in sawing old beams into boards, then that might be just the thing to use. Culturally its a money laundering scheme. The mob takes dirty money and makes it "good" by laundering. Use "antique reclaimed beams" to make your beach house on the Vineyard or mountain home near the slops in Vale look instantly old, and that makes the new money that paid for it instantly old too. And what could be more green than taking into account all the steps mentioned above to turn reclaimed things into usable lumber, then add to that a long ride on a flatbed followed by a ferry ride out to some island getaway? Oh, you could just use trees air dried from the property or cut locally for the construction, but that would be too obvious…..end rant.

All that said I made an entry door and set of large knee brackets out of "reclaimed" lumber this past summer for my garage/barn build. The bracket material was 10/4 cypress flooring planks my grandfather ripped form the old thread mill where he worked when it closed in the 1950's, the door was primarily made from the dumpster at work. One piece at a time…didn't cost me a dime…..my family was way ahead of the curve on the reclaimed trend, by like 60 years, and we were not alone in it, used to be called "the frugal yankee approach to creative repurposing". Almost perverse the direction its gone.

What Peter said...........

I charge double shop rate to work with reclaimed, too hard on tooling.

Larry

[Darren Almeida]

I built a shaker end table from reclaimed wood and detailed it in this thread:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?203655-Reclaimed-siding-end-table

I did it because the mahogany was free. It was a lot of work to get the wood ready to use. If I had to pay even 1/2 the price of new mahogany, I would have just bought new wood.

Darren

[Ethan Melad]

i think its true that reclaimed is not always as green as marketers make it out to be, but that doesn't mean its not valuable or worth using. As previously mentioned, a large portion of reclaimed lumber is old-growth wood that is difficult to find now (or illegal to harvest), and so of course that wood will bring a premium. and while of course it takes energy to reclaim and mill this wood, doing so saves the lumber from a landfill and can reduce the load on forestry and new tree farming. for many people it's worth it (maybe aesthetically, maybe sentimentally, maybe environmentally) to have wood that has previously used and has gained a new lease on life. Is it always worth it? probably not. but i don't think its fair to claim that reclaimed lumber is useless and only for people with disposable income.