Some of you may be interested in this, it was posted at another forum: it's an article about lacquer that appears in the April 2010 issue of Popular Woodworking. It's written by Bob Flexner (author of Understanding Wood Finishing).
Thanks Dave, I'm emailing this to my father!
Cool history there, too!
I inherited some wood project books from my dad, most of which date to the early 50's. How old they were jumped out at me when I checked out the Adirondack chair project. The materials list shows cypress as the primary wood.
I wonder how many decades it has been since cypress was available in lumber yards? It went away a looooong time ago!
Quote from: Pilgrim on March 12, 2010, 09:05:11 AM
I inherited some wood project books from my dad, most of which date to the early 50's. How old they were jumped out at me when I checked out the Adirondack chair project. The materials list shows cypress as the primary wood.
I wonder how many decades it has been since cypress was available in lumber yards? It went away a looooong time ago!
My dad made some Adirondack lawn chairs in the early 50s :). I still wear a small scar over my left eye from running in to one of them >:(, but when I wear these sunglasses 8) no one can see it.
Rick
Thats a keeper... Ta Mr W ;)
Quote from: Pilgrim on March 12, 2010, 09:05:11 AM
I inherited some wood project books from my dad, most of which date to the early 50's. How old they were jumped out at me when I checked out the Adirondack chair project. The materials list shows cypress as the primary wood.
I wonder how many decades it has been since cypress was available in lumber yards? It went away a looooong time ago!
You can get it here in Houston. Mind you it's a specialty type thing though and not too cheap either. I bet it's fairly common in La.
I was surprised that it's available in any form other than "recovered" cypress, salvaged from old buildings and other uses. I thought that a few years ago cypress was in real trouble...maybe it wasn't as short in supply as I thought. It hasn't been a standard lumber material anywhere in the northern US for decades.
Interesting Extension publication from the University of Florida says near the end that cypress is re-growing and cypress harvesting is on the rise again: http://www.sfrc.ufl.edu/Extension/pubtxt/cir1186.htm
Here's a really interesting website from a company in Florida that recovers 200+ year-old sunken cypress logs.... http://www.recoveredhollowlog.com/
When it pays to recover sunken logs like these, it tells you something about the resale value.
Recovered timber is a big business. They are pulling old growth long leaf pine from southern rivers and lakes for huge profit - these logs sank in excess of a 100 years ago. Plus hardwood logs are being pulled from northern rivers and lakes where the cold temps have helped to preserve them - once again these are old growth logs. An article I read sometime back said that a large portion of the hardwoods became high dollar veneers.
While down the the glop yestiddy, I saw Axemen on the History channel - a couple of the segments were guys searching old Florida streams. One of them pulled up a 50-foot cypress log about 3 ft in diameter. They were mighty happy about that as they took off for the mill.