DAVE.W submerged lumber..
Here are a couple articles about the new found lumber logs. Some have been under water for over 100 years.
By Larry Greenemeier
Updated: 11:28 a.m. ET Sept 13, 2005
As the traditional logging industry deals with unsteady prices and the challenges of globalization, the value of a new crop is coming to light: trees hidden under reservoirs, long given up for lost.
While no exact count of these "rediscovered" forests -- which are being logged primarily in North and South America, Russia, and Malaysia -- seems to exist, one estimate puts it at about 200 million trees, a global supply worth about $40 billion. These watery woods have been preserved by cold water and protected from rot and insect infestation. The resulting high-quality timber is highly sought after, especially by craftspeople.
Barges and divers have long gone after both standing trees and abandoned, sunken logs, but now a new technology is upping the ante, allowing more submerged trees to be cut more quickly. Proponents -- including those developing the new high-tech method -- say underwater harvests could help the planet, since they "spare" healthy forests in favor of the dead. Others contend the waterlogged trees are a nonrenewable resource whose harvest will simply detract attention from issues on land. In British Columbia this summer, a logging company and a First Nation band are embarking on a partnership that highlights the complicated allure of this new-old industry.
Salvaging Superior logs - Lake Superior's Chequamegon Bay near Bayfield, Wisconsin
American Forests, July-August, 1994 by Buz Swerkstrom
A unique "logging" operation is bringing up sunken treasure in the form of virgin timber cut and lost 100 or more years ago.
Paul Bunyan might have blanched at the sight: A logger diving into water rather than climbing trees, wearing webbed fins rather than leather boots, and working with eye-bolts and airbags instead of axes and saws.
Then again, mighty Paul may well have admired the initiative, ingenuity, and finish-what-has-been-started attitude of 35-year-old Scott Mitchen, a veteran deep-sea diver who now spends his summers salvaging sunken logs from the bottom of Lake Superior's Chequamegon Bay near Bayfield, Wisconsin.
There are thousands of submerged logs in the large bay, logs that became waterlogged and sank while being floated from the Apostle Islands and elsewhere to sawmills that dotted the shoreline in the second half of the 19th century and the first decade or so of the 20th century. The logs are virgin white and red pine, bird's-eye (sugar) maple, yellow birch, hemlock, oak, elm, and other types of wood--slow-grown, fine-grained, well-preserved logs in lengths (most are 16 feet long) and diameters to make lumbermen salivate.
The state of Wisconsin grants Mitchen permits for 40-acre sections to conduct the log-salvaging operation. Last summer, Mitchen and company worked four adjacent 40-acre sections off Roy's Point, once the site of a large sawmill.
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Most of the logs, says Mitchen, "are just laying on the bottom, every which way. There are stacks of them." With recycling and forest preservation such significant issues today, Mitchen thinks his salvage operation amounts to "perfect timing."
"The logs are piled up at the base of a slope," explains Buz Holland, a diver who works with Mitchen. "When they sank, they would hit the slope and just roll down." Their average depth is 30 feet, and the low oxygen content of the water there "preserves wood beautifully," he explains. Most of the softwood logs have deteriorated slightly at the ends, but the hardwood logs are in near-perfect condition.
Adolph Mashlan, an active 80-year-old logger and sawmill operator, was largely responsible for piquing Mitchen's interest in Lake Superior's sunken wood treasure. "The old-timers talked about all the logs," he told Mitchen, and urged him to check out the legends. "It was all logs, logs, and more logs. I didn't know they would hit a jackpot of hardwood logs like this, though."
Working with a deckhand, and sometimes with a second diver, Mitchen pilots his 28-foot boat to the allotted area and dives in search of prime-cut logs that will satisfy the needs of Bacon Veneer, a wood-veneer company in Des Moines, Iowa, that has bought the logs.
Mitchen takes down a deflated plastic airbag attached to a long airhose. The airbag is to Mitchen what a chainsaw is to a forest logger: his most essential tool. After finding a log he wants to salvage, he screws in an eye-bolt near the end of the log, hooks on the airbag with a quick-attach device called a caribiner, and opens a valve to fill the airbag. The inflated bag rises to the surface with the log in tow. After a 30- to 40-foot ascent through water, the log explodes vertically several feet out of the water.
Mitchen often brings up two, three, or four logs simultaneously by popping eye-bolts in all of them, stringing them together with nylon webbing, and attaching an airbag to the webbing.
After being brought to the surface, the logs are towed to shallow water and stacked. An industrial crane is brought to the site on a barge to lift the logs from the water.
Last summer (1993)--Mitchen's second of serious salvaging--he brought up about 100 logs between early June and early September. Mitchen estimates that there are enough good logs between the Bayfield area and Ashland--about 20 miles away--to keep him and his divers busy for at least the next 20 summers.
Although Mitchen wants to make as much money as he can from the logs, his profit margin is not the only item on the bottom line. Some of the wood will be sold to musical-instrument builders, woodworkers who handcraft fine furniture, and other artisans. Mitchen has already received "letters from every state and a few other countries" from people interested in making use of this historic wood.
"Even for veneer-grade plywood, it's not the sort of thing that should be just thrown into a standard production type of utilization," says Holland. "More than half the timber's worth is its history and uniqueness--it's a time capsule."
Mitchen says he feels "the presence of the lumberjacks" when he is with the sunken logs, many of which were chopped down with axes. He experiences satisfaction in knowing that in some measure, all the hard work those lumberjacks put into harvesting these logs is now finally being rewarded.
Mitchen hopes to use some of the salvaged wood to build an 1880s-era sawmill-camp-museum complex in Ashland, and route most of the salvaged logs through that operation. Visitors would be able to watch the underwater salvage operation on TV monitors while at the sawmill. Some proceeds from the salvaged logs now being sold will be used for the $1.2 million project
By Larry Greenemeier
Updated: 11:28 a.m. ET Sept 13, 2005
As the traditional logging industry deals with unsteady prices and the challenges of globalization, the value of a new crop is coming to light: trees hidden under reservoirs, long given up for lost.
While no exact count of these "rediscovered" forests -- which are being logged primarily in North and South America, Russia, and Malaysia -- seems to exist, one estimate puts it at about 200 million trees, a global supply worth about $40 billion. These watery woods have been preserved by cold water and protected from rot and insect infestation. The resulting high-quality timber is highly sought after, especially by craftspeople.
Barges and divers have long gone after both standing trees and abandoned, sunken logs, but now a new technology is upping the ante, allowing more submerged trees to be cut more quickly. Proponents -- including those developing the new high-tech method -- say underwater harvests could help the planet, since they "spare" healthy forests in favor of the dead. Others contend the waterlogged trees are a nonrenewable resource whose harvest will simply detract attention from issues on land. In British Columbia this summer, a logging company and a First Nation band are embarking on a partnership that highlights the complicated allure of this new-old industry.
Salvaging Superior logs - Lake Superior's Chequamegon Bay near Bayfield, Wisconsin
American Forests, July-August, 1994 by Buz Swerkstrom
A unique "logging" operation is bringing up sunken treasure in the form of virgin timber cut and lost 100 or more years ago.
Paul Bunyan might have blanched at the sight: A logger diving into water rather than climbing trees, wearing webbed fins rather than leather boots, and working with eye-bolts and airbags instead of axes and saws.
Then again, mighty Paul may well have admired the initiative, ingenuity, and finish-what-has-been-started attitude of 35-year-old Scott Mitchen, a veteran deep-sea diver who now spends his summers salvaging sunken logs from the bottom of Lake Superior's Chequamegon Bay near Bayfield, Wisconsin.
There are thousands of submerged logs in the large bay, logs that became waterlogged and sank while being floated from the Apostle Islands and elsewhere to sawmills that dotted the shoreline in the second half of the 19th century and the first decade or so of the 20th century. The logs are virgin white and red pine, bird's-eye (sugar) maple, yellow birch, hemlock, oak, elm, and other types of wood--slow-grown, fine-grained, well-preserved logs in lengths (most are 16 feet long) and diameters to make lumbermen salivate.
The state of Wisconsin grants Mitchen permits for 40-acre sections to conduct the log-salvaging operation. Last summer, Mitchen and company worked four adjacent 40-acre sections off Roy's Point, once the site of a large sawmill.
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Most of the logs, says Mitchen, "are just laying on the bottom, every which way. There are stacks of them." With recycling and forest preservation such significant issues today, Mitchen thinks his salvage operation amounts to "perfect timing."
"The logs are piled up at the base of a slope," explains Buz Holland, a diver who works with Mitchen. "When they sank, they would hit the slope and just roll down." Their average depth is 30 feet, and the low oxygen content of the water there "preserves wood beautifully," he explains. Most of the softwood logs have deteriorated slightly at the ends, but the hardwood logs are in near-perfect condition.
Adolph Mashlan, an active 80-year-old logger and sawmill operator, was largely responsible for piquing Mitchen's interest in Lake Superior's sunken wood treasure. "The old-timers talked about all the logs," he told Mitchen, and urged him to check out the legends. "It was all logs, logs, and more logs. I didn't know they would hit a jackpot of hardwood logs like this, though."
Working with a deckhand, and sometimes with a second diver, Mitchen pilots his 28-foot boat to the allotted area and dives in search of prime-cut logs that will satisfy the needs of Bacon Veneer, a wood-veneer company in Des Moines, Iowa, that has bought the logs.
Mitchen takes down a deflated plastic airbag attached to a long airhose. The airbag is to Mitchen what a chainsaw is to a forest logger: his most essential tool. After finding a log he wants to salvage, he screws in an eye-bolt near the end of the log, hooks on the airbag with a quick-attach device called a caribiner, and opens a valve to fill the airbag. The inflated bag rises to the surface with the log in tow. After a 30- to 40-foot ascent through water, the log explodes vertically several feet out of the water.
Mitchen often brings up two, three, or four logs simultaneously by popping eye-bolts in all of them, stringing them together with nylon webbing, and attaching an airbag to the webbing.
After being brought to the surface, the logs are towed to shallow water and stacked. An industrial crane is brought to the site on a barge to lift the logs from the water.
Last summer (1993)--Mitchen's second of serious salvaging--he brought up about 100 logs between early June and early September. Mitchen estimates that there are enough good logs between the Bayfield area and Ashland--about 20 miles away--to keep him and his divers busy for at least the next 20 summers.
Although Mitchen wants to make as much money as he can from the logs, his profit margin is not the only item on the bottom line. Some of the wood will be sold to musical-instrument builders, woodworkers who handcraft fine furniture, and other artisans. Mitchen has already received "letters from every state and a few other countries" from people interested in making use of this historic wood.
"Even for veneer-grade plywood, it's not the sort of thing that should be just thrown into a standard production type of utilization," says Holland. "More than half the timber's worth is its history and uniqueness--it's a time capsule."
Mitchen says he feels "the presence of the lumberjacks" when he is with the sunken logs, many of which were chopped down with axes. He experiences satisfaction in knowing that in some measure, all the hard work those lumberjacks put into harvesting these logs is now finally being rewarded.
Mitchen hopes to use some of the salvaged wood to build an 1880s-era sawmill-camp-museum complex in Ashland, and route most of the salvaged logs through that operation. Visitors would be able to watch the underwater salvage operation on TV monitors while at the sawmill. Some proceeds from the salvaged logs now being sold will be used for the $1.2 million project
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"Dirty Jobs" did a segment on this last year. Very interesting! Some of the logs they pulled out of the great lakes were cut for shipment to England before the War of 1812 to be used as ship masts. HUGE!! And worth THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of dollars today. 0 -
Classic, there was a really good show about logging on the History Channel a couple of times that dealt with that very topic. They showed some logs that had been pulled out of the Great Lakes, and some HUGE ones buried in peat bogs, etc., that looked to be at least six to eight feet in diameter. They had absorbed some chemicals from the soil that added some real warmth to the wood. The price per board foot for those was unreal.
Very interesting article.[:)]0 -
Good article. I'd like to see a cross section that wood. Interesting indeed. 0 -
They pull a lot of this lumber out of the lake we now live on...BIG $$$ 0 -
The sad thing is that the majority of the logs, at least on the "Dirty Jobs" show, went to veneer. It was beautiful though! 0 -
Very interesting, thanks for taking the time to find that and post it! 0 -
They are pulling old cypress logs from rivers in south Georgia.
Some are 3 feet in diameter, and the growth rings show 350 years, and the tree was cut down 120 years ago.0 -
quote:Originally posted by dlrjj
Classic, there was a really good show about logging on the History Channel a couple of times that dealt with that very topic. They showed some logs that had been pulled out of the Great Lakes, and some HUGE ones buried in peat bogs, etc., that looked to be at least six to eight feet in diameter. They had absorbed some chemicals from the soil that added some real warmth to the wood. The price per board foot for those was unreal.
Very interesting article.[:)]
I tevo'd that and showed it to everyone that would watch. Very interesting. those trees burried in the bogs were thousands of years old and wider than the semi hauling them out. Think they'd let me throw together a gun rack with some of that stuff.[:D]0 -
can you believe prices of 350 and up per 1 square board foot. 0 -
Interesting read. I wonder how many are live oaks that are used in ship building. 0 -
The down side.... There goes some prime fishing structure. 0 -
Another source of prized old wood that does not grow anymore is old warehouses.
Fifteen years ago, in Macon Ga., they tore down an cotton warehouse that had been built in 1880. This building was the size of WalMart.
The building was timber framed with heart pine. This is the heart wood of the Southern Yellow Pine. It is beautiful and is termite proof, because it is so laden with sap. It is very dense and makes great flooring.
This cotton warehouse had been built with 16x16s, twelve, fifteen, and twenty feet long.
There was an adjacent building that was pretty good sized. They took down the giant timbers and stored them in there. There must have been 500,000 board feet of this wood. They got a big bandsaw. If you wanted an 8 foot 2x4 they sawed one up. If you wanted 5,000 board feet of 1x16s, they sawed it up for you. The stuff was going for $3.10/board foot.
They had a couple of kids with metal detectors. They would sweep the beams and pull nails and screws.
The growth rings were unbelievably tight. I counted 400 years in one beam. The tree was cut down in 1880, it was a pine cone before Columbus discovered America.
These timbers were cut from trees that must have been 3 to 4 foot diameter. Heart pine of this type is virtually non existant on the stump today, it has already been chopped down, and nobody wants to wait 400 years for their pine trees to mature.
In 1880, heart pine was a common construction grade material, about like a concrete block is today.0 -
I remember about 25 years ago there was a rush on old "Barn Wood" people were paying outlandish prices for it to decorate inside their houses. A bunch of guys in Kentucky were stealing it off of Old Tobacco barns, made good money until they were caught.[:0] 0 -
They were doing this in Lake Michigin over 10 years ago. Amazing how well preserved wood stays under water.
I was digging out a spring to set a 500gal tank in and came across some hand hewed boards that were used to box the spring in for a water source. The family that lived in the farm house 200 yards away said they didn't know how it would have got there and the family has been ther 120 years. The box was probably 5 feet under the ground, but the boards (more like half logs) were in perfect shape....0 -
ECC, how about pulling a nice branch or two and making us some purty grips?[^][:D][:p] 0
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