Timeless Timber: Unique

ambience: Sawmill fx

We’re at a sawmill in Ashland, Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Superior. The wood that’s cut here is unlike most lumber. It spent quite a few years lying at the bottom of the lake, forgotten. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by DuPont. In the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, quite a few spruce, maple and other logs were lost on the way to saw mills, and eventually sank under water. Scott Mitchen, a scuba diver and treasure hunter, tied some of the logs to inner tubes and brought them up to the surface. The logs turned out to be superior to contemporary wood in many ways. It’s denser than modern lumber because the trees in old growth forests grew more slowly than the newer forests that replace them.

“In the lumber business you cannot find this type of wood. Once these trees were cut down, it never grew back quite the same. Trees grew back as big, but they never grew back as slow, because of the canopies that were clear cut. The growth rings in this wood, we’ve counted up to 77 growth rings per inch, versus two or three today. So it’s a denser wood. It’s a harder wood.”

The lumber, now called “Timeless Timber”, is also valuable material for making musical instruments. All those years underwater opened up the cells of the wood, allowing them to resonate with sound. Scott Mitchen says that those who buy the timber have a tangible connection to the past.

“This wood, and this era, literally fueled the industrial revolution. So it’s a special treasure that our forefathers left behind. With my grandfather being a lumberjack, I like to think that his efforts didn’t go in vain and that we’re finishing off their operation that they started a hundred years ago.”

Please visit our website at nationalgeograpic.com. Pulse of the Planet is presented by DuPont, bringing you the miracles of science, with additional support provided by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.

Timeless Timber: Unique

Divers are retrieving logs that sank to the bottom of Lake Superior in the 19th century. The "Timeless Timber" that's cut from these logs is unlike any lumber from modern trees.
Air Date:11/15/2000
Scientist:
Transcript:

ambience: Sawmill fx

We're at a sawmill in Ashland, Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Superior. The wood that's cut here is unlike most lumber. It spent quite a few years lying at the bottom of the lake, forgotten. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by DuPont. In the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, quite a few spruce, maple and other logs were lost on the way to saw mills, and eventually sank under water. Scott Mitchen, a scuba diver and treasure hunter, tied some of the logs to inner tubes and brought them up to the surface. The logs turned out to be superior to contemporary wood in many ways. It's denser than modern lumber because the trees in old growth forests grew more slowly than the newer forests that replace them.

"In the lumber business you cannot find this type of wood. Once these trees were cut down, it never grew back quite the same. Trees grew back as big, but they never grew back as slow, because of the canopies that were clear cut. The growth rings in this wood, we've counted up to 77 growth rings per inch, versus two or three today. So it's a denser wood. It's a harder wood."

The lumber, now called "Timeless Timber", is also valuable material for making musical instruments. All those years underwater opened up the cells of the wood, allowing them to resonate with sound. Scott Mitchen says that those who buy the timber have a tangible connection to the past.

"This wood, and this era, literally fueled the industrial revolution. So it's a special treasure that our forefathers left behind. With my grandfather being a lumberjack, I like to think that his efforts didn't go in vain and that we're finishing off their operation that they started a hundred years ago."

Please visit our website at nationalgeograpic.com. Pulse of the Planet is presented by DuPont, bringing you the miracles of science, with additional support provided by the National Science Foundation. I'm Jim Metzner.