Lacquer article

[Dave W]

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).

[bassvirtuoso]

Thanks Dave, I'm emailing this to my father!

[drbassman]

Cool history there, too!

[Pilgrim]

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!

[rahock]

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 no one can see it.
Rick

[Highlander]

Thats a keeper... Ta Mr W 

[Lightyear]

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.

[Pilgrim]

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.

[Lightyear]

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.

[Pilgrim]

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.