Anybody know if this is for real? I sent them (US Blanks) an email but have not heard back yet. If it is real, I sort of hope their business crashes and burns!
US BLANKS INTRODUCES OLD-GROWTH REDWOOD STRINGERS
what’s wrong with recycling old wood? I do it myself. Just got a bunch out of a 1920’s house that was being remodeled. I am sure they are NOT cutting down trees.
If you read beyond the bold title, it sounds like they found an old stash.
but because old-growth harvesting is no longer permitted, the supply of this ancient wood is limited.
This particular lot of Redwood was cut many years ago from a forest managed for perpetual production. We secured a substantial, but finite supply that we are thrilled to be able to offer as a stringer option.
I was so shocked I did not read it all. Still though, seems like just encouraging yuppie excess. Sort of like selling ivory in a way, increases demand, could encourage black market. Oh well…
I have been stashing old sandblasted wood signs. They made thousands of them in the 70’s and 80’s. Made from vertical grain virgin old growth redwood. Also used for decks on resort houses in places like Hilton Head Island etc etc. The wood used for siding was usually a lower grade.
Recycling not bad at all but somehow this just stuck in my craw. Overly sensitive craw I guess.
I can remember when we were building resin redwood slab tables. People freaked out. The slabs were coming from stumps left over from logging 100 years before.
Back in the day a 3/4" redwood stringer was just about stock, vertical grain very nice stock by the standards now.
Thinking this is more wall hanger stuff. Oh by the PP technic, lotz a sureform time, shame.
You better check your facts on the harvesting of “Old Growth”. Depends on the circumstance and the age.
People often forget that timber is one of the worlds greatest ever renewable resources…its when greed enters the equation , that the environment is taken out as a consideration for harvesting…there has been massive steps forward in sutainable plantations , and even old growth forests can still provide a great amount of renewable resource if managed correctly and not over harvested …it’s even healthier for old growth areas to be selectively harvested to allow younger trees to flourish. Anyone who appreciates these blanks should grab them while they’re available.
My parent’s own a large mountain top property in West Virginia. Less than 100 years ago the property was logged out. If you go looking you can still find evidence of the logging activities on the land like massive old stumps and terraces in the mountain so the horses and equipment could get up and down the steep slopes. Today the property is again home to massive trees that will continue to grow until someday they are harvested again. Surrounding properties are already seeing some limited logging on land that was cleared a century ago. Trees are a crop just like corn.
I used to have a company that recovered long leaf yellow heart pine from old buildings. It is much like redwood as it is slow growing and was pretty much gone by early 1900s. What gets me is the fact that they used to tear these great old buildings down by hand,board by board.
Now they just bulldoze them and the wood goes to the landfill. They blame it on liability and the lack of workers willing to do it. I saw a great old barn pushed down and loaded in to dump trucks last year. Some of the boards were 18"wide and the timbers were 30 feet long 3x14. We waste a lot of shit in the USA.
Try getting something from the dump nowadays. You can’t unless you are in a small town.
Kayu, guess you have never actually visited an old growth redwood forest in the Pacific Northwest? Nor compared that to a clear cut atrocity, or a sterile abortion of a tree farm?
Really an entire old growth forest functions in much the same way as a single giant organism. Many of those trees are over 600 years old and some as old as a couple thousand years. You can NOT make something like that.
Mako, where I was living in Colorado, logged over about 100 years ago. Thickly forested now, with only Junipers that poison the soil for any other plants and create a massive tinder box fire danger that in fact was nearly the cause of the entire town being burned to ash about 10 or 15 years ago.
I have been in places in Oregon that were logged over and then allowed to grow back and turned into state campgrounds. In the “forest”. I camped in couple of those and also on edge of old growth area where hiking was allowed. There is NO comparison. The regrowth really was like a desert in comparison. Heart breaking if you have the eyes to see it
It’s not for lack of workers or Liability. There are companies that will go in and salvage the lumber. The Problem is this takes time and effort in the eyes of those wishing to redevlup a property Time is money and it is cheaper and easier to bulldoze down an old home then take it apart to recycle the lumber. and other ueful matrials and hardwear. In Calif in the the 1880s untill around the 1920s redwood was often used as Frameing. It is termite resistant and water resistant .
On a planet billions of years old a couple hundred years is a bink of an eye.
Mako, that is true. But I am not billions of years old. Heck let’s just extreminate the rest of the dolphins and whales since they’ve only been around for an eye blink and something better is likely to evolve by and by to fill the niche.
Here’s a short take from Nat’l Geo…
Deforestation is clearing Earth’s forests on a massive scale, often resulting in damage to the quality of the land. Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but swaths the size of Panama are lost each and every year.
The world’s rain forests could completely vanish in a hundred years at the current rate of deforestation.
Forests are cut down for many reasons, but most of them are related to money or to people’s need to provide for their families.The biggest driver of deforestation is agriculture. Farmers cut forests to provide more room for planting crops or grazing livestock. Often many small farmers will each clear a few acres to feed their families by cutting down trees and burning them in a process known as “slash and burn” agriculture.
Another Swaylock thread takes a turn for the worse. You can buy kiln dried Redwood in any Lowes or Home Depot. 2x4, 2x6, 2x8, 1xwhatever. Any length. So where the flock do you think they get it? China? They certainly don’t get it in Old Growth forests that are under Federal or State protection. But; There are lots of small groves of trees on private property. There are sick,dying and dead trees that are also removed. Redwood is NOT off limits. Redwoods grow almost anywhere there is Fog. I used to have a twenty footer growing by my back door in Santa Cruz. My sister has two that she planted in her yard in Bakersfield, Calif. Only a few years old and already 20 foot. Another friend has a dozen or so on each side of the drive to his home. Easy forty footers and if they were in Oregon they would have already clear cut them. Up on the Redwood Coast, the State of Calif. is talking about cutting down and removing a bunch of trees that are well over 400 years old just to widen Hwy. 1. Lowel
I’m all for respecting the planet, but I’m not seeing u.s. blanks as the bad guy here. Sounds like they scored some nice old growth redwood and are using it for the best thing on earth it could be used for - surfboards! And just the stringer at that.