The Britsh news website, The Guardian mentioned our company in an excellent article on recycling lumber. According to journalist Leon Kaye’s research…
Of the approximate 70m tons of wood sent to landfill annually, the US government estimates 30m tons of it could have been reused…. But while aluminium, glass, paper and plastic are often culled for recycling from construction sites prior to final disposal, wood is overlooked and is about 17% of the waste that ends up in municipal dumps.
Here at the Crossroads Recycled Lumber yard we’ve salvaged millions of board feet of reclaimed lumber and timbers over the years. Every plank and beam was once part of a majestic tree, felled with a chainsaw, or by hand with a crosscut saw depending on the era, and shaped by millhands, in forests and mills across North America.
The Crossroads Recycled Lumber yard sits on the site of the old North Fork Mill, so we are reminded every day of the legacy that our wood leads. Over the years as the timber industry has declined, we have collected beams and trusses from sawmills deconstructed up and down the West Coast.
Logging remains one of the top two most dangerous jobs in America, and our lumber from these mills pays homage to the hard work of loggers, mill hands, and millwrights and the role they played in American History. It is a special honor for us to be able to help preserve the timbers from these mills through reuse.
We’d like to share with you some inventory with a very different look. Our Blue-Stained Pine is unique in that it is some of our only inventory that is not reclaimed and recycled lumber, but rather rescued.
Source
In the Sierra Nevada foothills where the Crossroads Lumber yard is located, there is a Western Bark Beetle epidemic. Driving up Road 225 in North Fork, visitors to Crossroads can see hundreds of standing dead and dying Sugar Pine, Ponderosa Pine, and Douglas Firs in the Sierra National Forest behind our yard.
These dying trees will become a fire hazard, and so Crossroads has taken action to procure some of the standing dead trees before they rot and are no longer usable lumber. We feel this is the most environmentally appropriate action to take.
Learn about the salvage process from start to finish! This is an excellent, informative mini-documentary about the deconstruction process, following the disassembly of the Port of Oakland, CA. Thank you StopWaste.org, for all of the work you do to Stop Waste!
Crossroads Recycled Lumber is featured from 3:25-5:33.
“Our clients are pretty conscientious about where their material comes from. They like the idea of recycled stuff. We as carpenters like to use [reclaimed wood] because you can’t find this tight grain, old growth stuff anymore. It’s already dry, and it’s a lot more fun to work with, a lot more stable.”
-Pete Crandall, Crossroads Recycled Lumber customer
Many more resources about this project are available on the StopWaste.org website at http://www.stopwaste.org/home/index.asp?page=775
Click here to see photos of the split decking from Building 802 on display in Whole Foods, Blossom Hill in San Jose.
Quality Wood
Named for its uniquely rich hue, Reclaimed Redwood is sought after for internal paneling projects to show off the deep varying shades of earthy red. Striking as it is inside, Redwood is also valued for external siding not only for it’s appearance, but also because it is rot-resistant.
Most of our Redwood stock was cut from old growth Redwood trees; you can see it in the tightness of the wood’s grain. Logging of old growth Redwoods has been tremendously reduced, and this recycled material simply cannot be matched by new wood.
Our Inventory
Crossroads’ salvage Redwood stock is very diverse, from tank wood that is clear and makes perfect lumber (with the exception of some occasional iron oxide staining), to our Redwood “Pitwood” that is very rough. We also have Redwood timbers salvaged from the demolition of Pacific Lumber Company’s Mill B in Scotia, California that are a bit rough but can be sawn into very nice stock with some big bolt holes with black stain.
The word “Crossroads” has various associations for different people. We’ve gotten a few misled calls over the years because of this, and it is part of the reason why we chose a whole new name for our new yard, Pacific Northwest Timbers. But the name Crossroads has deeper meaning, and I would like to share how it came to be.
I mentioned in a previous post that my Dad has been salvaging wood since before I was born. For years he did business under the name Cedar Lumber, but that was along with other side projects. When I was 7 my folks decided to try something new, and we spent 18 months living in beautiful Bellingham, Washington. My mom found an old farmhouse on the corner of Bakerview and Hannegan; roads that lead from the county into Bellingham proper. The visible location was a great boon for business. My Dad bought a Wood-Mizer and invested in some salvage lumber, and he and a good friend (Brien Thomas of Mad Marmot Mills in Everson, WA) worked their butts off. The company was at a Crossroads, literally and figuratively.
My dad’s passion for Delta Blues music was also part of what made him amenable to the name “Crossroads” when my mom suggested it. In both African and European folk mythology, the Crossroads symbolize a place where the physical world and the spirit world overlap, and is a common theme in Blues music. The King of the Delta Blues Singers, Robert Johnson’s song “Crossroad Blues” is the most famous example. There’s some debate as to whether the song is about Johnson trying to hitch hike home at night, or selling his soul to become a guitar master, but it’s beautiful, soulful music.
The most profound meaning for me behind the name “Crossroads” has to do with the nature of our inventory. The reclaimed wood in our yard has come from dozens of sources: movie studios, military bases, railroad cars, even the ocean floor. And instead of being burned or left to deteriorate in a landfill, recycling has given the lumber new life. From our yard this material may live on for decades as posts and beams, flooring and paneling, or even set sail on the open sea as part of a boat. The lumber in our yard is at a Crossroads.
Origins
Some of the most intriguing lumber we have in stock was never used in construction, and yet still considered salvage timbers. These beams are believed to have been loaded onto a Canadian ship in 1921 that wrecked off the Pacific Coast.
In early 2010 as a beach near the wreck eroded, the shipwreck became exposed and the cargo began washing ashore. The Canadian Exporter was carrying 3 million board feet of lumber plus 200 tons of other cargo, heading from Vancouver, British Columbia to Portland, Oregon and then on to Asia, according to a story in the Seattle Times. Some of the timbers that Crossroads and our sister company, Pacific Northwest Timbers now have in inventory were found by locals and hauled ashore with a tow truck, a few others were discovered just beneath the waters’ surface by a local oyster fisherman.
Last summer a couple guys came to the North Fork Millsite “investigating options for the processing of woody biomass from local forests.” They took a tour of our yard and learned about reclaimed lumber! Read their blog about the visit here!
