It's Earth Day as I write this, and that calls for a special topic. Fortunately, one turned up on my desk this very morning. It's something I'd barely even heard of before — river salvaged wood.
My knowledge about this wood was pretty sketchy so I was thrilled to find someone who actually works with it. Brothers Martin and Patrick Trudeau own and operate Village Woodworks located in Īle-Perrot, near Montreal, and, although they also use traditional lumber to custom make furniture, more and more of their products are made with original Canadian old-growth wood that has been reclaimed from the depths of the Ottawa River.
The Trudeau brothers get their "river-run" lumber from Logs End, a Canadian firm based in Ottawa that specializes in flooring and architectural mouldings made from salvaged timbers. Most of the wood Logs End salvages is pine with the odd hardwood such as oak and birch cropping up occasionally. All are considered precious in this world of rarefied woodworking.
As wood craftsmen in their own right with a passion for their medium, as well as distributors for Logs End's river-run flooring and mouldings, the Trudeau brothers have developed a special relationship with the folks at the Ottawa company. It's that relationship, and what I suspect are shared environmental values, that allow the Trudeaus to produce reclaimed furniture made from wood that, in Martin's words, "was cut down in the 1800s and preserved by the cold waters of the Ottawa River."
Some logs recovered from the Ottawa River were cut over 200 years ago. (LOGS END INC.)
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This is important from an environmental perspective because it avoids cutting down even more trees and allows the river bed to return to its natural state.
Martin shared an interesting bit of Canadian history that I didn't recall from my school days. In the mid-1800s, the British monarchy claimed all oak trees in Canada for the building of warships. While they also used other woods, such as pine, for shipbuilding, the British considered oak a noble wood.
To meet this demand, Canadian loggers would hand-hew those coveted oaks into beams and skid them by horse through the woods to the nearest creek or stream during the winter. When spring came, the loggers would dam the creeks and streams so that the logs would be guided into the Ottawa River, destined for Quebec City and eventual shipping to Britain. Every year, a certain percentage of those logs would sink, leading to the underwater caches of old growth white oak that are being found and reused today.
In addition to all the other wood they've raised from the depths of the Ottawa River, Logs End has salvaged 12 to 14 of those white oak beams originally destined for British warships, one of which is a massive 36 feet long. Using scuba divers to ply the dark, murky river waters, Logs End concentrates its salvage efforts near old saw mill locations.
The logs' location along the river, the level of sediment in the water, and even the type of sediment, affects how the salvaged wood will look once sawn into planks. The first inch or two of such logs are generally black — or very dark — and porous.
Past the outer edges, white oak, for example, can take on unique charcoal tinges and hues. The natural colours of other woods are also changed to varying degrees by the lengthy exposure to water, to the point where the sawn result is always a surprise.
This gives Patrick Trudeau, a trained cabinet maker with almost 20 years in the trade, the opportunity to create pieces that are often one-of-a-kind as well as eco-friendly.
When I asked whether centuries spent underwater would render pine even softer, he advised that salvaged pine is denser than new-growth pine, with fewer knots and a stronger grain pattern because old growth trees grew more slowly. It's therefore a popular choice for flooring as well as furniture.
Martin refers to the reclaimed wood his company works with as treasures, describing one piece with particular reverence: the only maple tree ever found in the river by Logs End. This rare find produced impressive 28-inch-wide planks once it was milled into boards. Given that size and its estimated stint under water once it was grown, he estimates the tree to be between 300 and 400 years old. He and his brother are still deciding what special thing to create with it, given its rarity and beauty.
The newest logs entrusted to Village Woodworks date to the mid-1950s. The oldest had been in the river for more than two centuries. Regardless of age, all salvaged wood was once considered lost. That it can now be reclaimed in an eco-friendly way and turned into something beautiful and functional that will last generations is something we can all celebrate, Earth Day or not.
Lowdown on logs
All logs used by Logs End and Village Woodworks are salvaged using eco-friendly recovery processes. They are then cut into one-inch-thick lumber, air dried for one to two months, and then kiln dried to the industry standard for moisture content of between 6 and 9 per cent.
Village Woodworks charges about 15 per cent more for pieces made with river-run wood than identical pieces made with standard woods.
For more information about Logs End, its recovery process, and the history of logging in Canada, visit www.logsend.com or contact Steve McCord at steve@logsend.com.
For more information about Village Woodworks' products and processes, contact Martin Trudeau at 514-425-5959. A website (www.villagewoodworks.com) should be live by the first week of May.
