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Being a compendium of things to do with flooring in general, Douglas Fir in specific and a collection of thoughts on how things are and
'Ought to Be' in the world 'According-to-David'.
Frequently asked questions about Douglas Fir
Old Wood LLC
FAQ'S about Old Wood LLC and our products:
Who we are: Old Wood LLC is at present wholly owned by the Old Family. We maintain a very low debt to equity status and we operate from revenue/profits deriving solely from plant operations. Most of our machinery is 100% company owned and we finance only as necessary for expansions and capabilities that we truly deem to be profitable and necessary.
Employees: A mix of Anglo (a New Mexico term for ‘caucasian’), Hispanic-Northern New Mexican, Native American and anyone else who comes along and wants to help build our team. About half and half male/female. Our young mother-of-three, Assistant Production Manager is female from Cochiti Pueblo near Santa Fe.
Green enough?
Old Wood LLC received a large federal grant under the Collaborative Forest Restoration Act in 2008 under the title:
Capacity building in flooring from small diameter timber.
Are we green? The board of this program believes we are enough to trust us with $360,000 of your money to build a new waste wood heated dry kiln, install machinery which will allow us to use ‘at risk’ trees from federal and private thinning jobs and in general push the envelope of Green Forestry.
In brief I believe that the West is burning due to an incoherent, fractured Federal forestry policy which has historically linked itself to Big Business to the detriment of small towns, rural Co-Ops, Tribes and small industry.
I believe very strongly that the salvation of our forests and potentially of remote rain-forests as well is the establishment and development of Robust, Muscular Cottage Industries with modern harvesting, transportation, energy co-generation and leading edge value added processing capabilities.
Old Wood LLC is putting it’s time and money where it’s mouth is in participation and production. We are active in the political and industry development process.
Perhaps most importantly: We pay top dollar for prime timber harvested from Federally and State Certified timber harvests. We make an effort to assure that the land-owner is aware of the true value of their larger trees and that we hope they will utilize the increased revenues from working with Old Wood to do A better job of harvesting and managing their lands.
We believe that it is all about doing a good job. We will never talk, meet, organize or promote our way to healthy forests.
The community: They should be well-trained, safe, well-paid and have legitimate stakeholder status in their own local woods.
SMALL DIAMETER TIMBER: In brief, Old Wood LLC has proprietary methods and ideas which we believe will allow us to move the ‘line of marginality’ (a graph which shows how small a tree can be used profitably) well over towards much smaller trees in the 6-10” diameter class. This effort will require significant funding, machinery, method and skill towards which we are pushing every day. Your business helps us move towards this goal as we plow over 50% of all our profits back into the business with the goal of being:
TRULY GREEN.
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What to expect in your floor: Random Length means: 18” to 12’ with average boards of 5-6’ in length. Bundles average 20 square feet and every bundle contains at minimum two full length boards. We include a few boards under three feet in every bundle. We sell pallets of “Shorts”very cheaply, ask if you’d like to use these, they’re great boards and can make a terrific parquet look.
The Rubber Meets the Road:
Length of floor boards is where a lot of this comes ‘home to roost’. We try to utilize 11’, 10’ and 8’ long logs only. Mostly 11’ if possible. So all the boards are 11’ long right? No. Douglas Fir from the high Rockies is a very good floor board but the trees are subject to wind, drought and temperature extremes. (Ever been skiing on the North Face in a wind storm?..pretty rough!). As such we chop out broken knots, sap pockets (beyond a minimal level) edge knots (which we strive to eliminate through very careful sawing) and other defect. As such, while the boards may all start out at 11’ they wind up as Random Length. When carefully and artistically utilized this mix makes for a truly high-grade, excellent floor with shorts going to start runs, work into edges, under cabinets, closets and so on. What happens to the shorter boards? We sell them a discounted prices, ask for them as they can make great looking floors.
MOISTURE AND ACCLIMATIZATION: Other people sell wet wood, we don’t! If the boards come out of a kiln in New Mexico, sticker stacked with many fans blowing 150 degree re-processed air over them until they reach 6% on German and English moisture meters, why do people insist that these boards will get drier somehow sitting in a pile three feet thick in a living room in California or New York?!!!!
There can still be some shrinkage but it is more in line with extreme conditions of dryness/humidity and the natrual cooeficient of expansion of all wood than it is baseline dryness.
If we tell you your wood is still in the kiln, please, let us keep it in the kiln until we say it is fully dry. Then, when it gets to your place, sure you can let it sit for a while but odds are it will get wetter not drier! This is often the case. Always try to install your floor during dry weather in line with all normal industry conventions such as; don’t take delivery in the rain, all, ALL wet trades finished to include paint, plaster etc.,
The floor should be the last thing finished before the builder hands you the keys. Boards over 5.25” in width will show expansion and contraction more than narrow boards and in the West in particular but our wider boards do fine. We have wide pine floors up to 16” in width that behave very well in the west.
BUY OLD WOOD or be ready to live with big cracks!
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