Storing and working large pieces of driftwood
(ED: Just posted this, but I made a tiny edit, and suddenly the thread disappeared! Trying again...)
Hi - I'm new to this forum, and just registered here I live in Iceland and have been preparing (for years, because my architect and engineer work at a snail's pace) to build a very unusual house (it's basically like a cave - concreted over a rock-covered earth form, which is then dug out, leaving rock-covered concrete, which is then buried, except for the windows and doors). In the main dome there will be a large loft made of heavy timber (will be supporting a bedroom with a waterbed), and I've been considering driftwood (it washes up on our north shore from Russia), since it's a local, environmentally friendly resource and it has a nice look to it. Since I'm stuck in waiting-purgatory for the plans and architectural diagrams to be done, I was thinking about taking care of acquiring, transporting and storing said driftwood, so I asked my engineer. He responded (translating):
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If you plan to use driftwood I consider that it should be dry and somewhat cleaned / worked. Otherwise there's a likelihood of undesirable spores and other life that could come into the house.
If you store it under a tarp then you can look into getting it, so long as it can be gotten to a mill in a timely manner to process it. Clean, dry and rot protect, therefore it won't be as wet.
Processing needs to happen at a mill with powerful machines
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There's a couple things about this that struck me as weird. First and foremost... driftwood takes *years* to get to Iceland. First weeks floating in freshwater, then years floating in saltwater. It then washes up on beaches and spends months just sitting in the wet sand and bombarded by rain... usually "stored" naturally like this:
https://farm7.static.flickr.com/6232...e9a7da0a_b.jpg
How rot prone exactly can it be? The wood is laden with salt. And how much "processing" is needed? I worry that "processing" it would make it lose its character (or would it?). Wonder how much processing even costs (haven't looked into it yet)
The other objection that comes to mind is that he said to store it under a tarp. I've stored wood under a tarp before, and at least in our climate, I would describe that as "destroying a tarp in order to rot your wood". We're a very windy climate (have recorded Cat5 wind gusts near my land), and water inevitably gets under the tarp - indeed, the wind will shred tarps over the course of a year from the constant flapping. The tarp just traps moisture. The last time I tried it I ended up with a pile of rotten wood and a shredded tarp. I've since stored wood in a different approach that was recommended to me - the pieces are all laid out flat, with thin strips of wood as spacers between them, and then all bundled up together with steel wire and lashed down to heavy objects. There seems to be no signs of rot in the wood stored this way, just "seasoning".
What's your take on all this? I have a friend whose father is a farmer up north and is looking to get rid of some driftwood trunks, and I'm itching to be able to do *something* to contribute to the house. But obviously I don't want to waste a bunch of money and work in order to get a pile of rot / unusable timber.
Really Interesting Project
Hi Karen
If you can identify the specific species - latin or scientific name - of the timber then you can look up that specie's characteristics - strength, flexibility, etc. Perhaps some local woodworkers can help.
Problems with driftwood is that it can be "over dried" in that too much of the lignin has leached out. This reduces strength, and flexibility and the timber may go brittle. There can also be internal decay or rot.
Test it. May I suggest that you cut some planks with a bandsaw or table saw:
- immediately smell the fresh cut - can you smell rot?
- then probe the fresh surfaces looking at surface texture and rot pockets,
- fasten one end of a longish piece and try bending it. Is it strong enough for your house?
But again, we have no experience with Russian timber species.
Good Luck
Graeme