Wood, Wonderful Wood.

   It is well known that I love wood, my friend Ron calls me a wood junkie, my passion for wood encompasses all aspects of wood, it is beautiful to look at, lovely to smell

 (most of the time), satisfying to manipulate 

and historic.

  A good portion of Ontario's history is made of wood, early on it was believed that there was so much wood in the golden horseshoe that it could never be used up.  That observation was made by an Englishman who had come from a country were all the good trees had been cut down already; never occurred to him that it could happen again.  

  Lumbering as well as pulp wood harvesting were the backbone industries in many Ontario towns, I can remember seeing river drives when I was a kid in Thessalon Ontario.  I thought I wanted to drive the alligator boat when I grew up, fireman wasn't a job in my small town.  If you can remember when television stations when off the air for the night, they played O Canada and showed videos of river drivers and lumberjacks topping huge trees in British Colombia.  

   Wood also can last a long time.  There are two companies that I have lumber and history and the environment mixed into their business model.  Deep River Lumber  reclaims sunken logs from the Ottawa River and Canadian Salvaged Timber reclaims timbers from old building as well as lumber from old trees that are cut down in the city of Toronto.

  I have used salvaged/recycled lumber in projects in the past, some of the wood is wonderful to work.  Beware of metallic inclusions, check the wood carefully before you cut or plane it, those old barn boards can be filled with everything from buck shot to horseshoe nails. A metal detector is a very good idea unless you want to spend time and money resharpening blades. (I learned the hard way, visual inspection is not enough).

there was nail, happily I was using a hand saw
and stopped immediately, minimum  damage done.