How to make antique timbers...

I love using salvaged lumber.

I don't know why.

Perhaps because I like history.  I also like the colours.  Something special happens to wood that is aged.

As mentioned in the previous blog, the mantle has an interesting story.  It (as well as other timbers for my mother's renovation) were acquired from the elevators at Dankin, Saskatchewan.

This is Dankin.

According to the Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation, this particular elevator was built in 1924.  These elevators served as a depot for the local farmers to drop off their grain.  The grain was generally shipped east.  Many of these elevators are now out of use, and in some cases the towns that were around them are gone.  The prairies are full of dead or dying communities.  I don't say this to be disparaging in any way.  Life is not easy out here.  Some places simply won't last.

Now if one wants to build a grain elevator in Saskatchewan in 1924 one has an obvious problem: lack of timber.  The prairies are distinctly lacking in trees.  This is only speculation but I am guessing the timbers came from Ontario, and I am guessing by their smell and colour that they are in the pine family.  Also all of the timbers that we salvaged from Dankin are heartwood.  That is, they are from the centre of the tree. This means that most likely when they were milled in Ontario, the good wood was kept for furniture or flooring or what-have-you, and the remaining heartwood (which is unstable, subject to checks, splits, twist, etc.) was sold to the rail company for relatively cheap, then shipped west to build grain elevators.

Want timbers?

One of the owners of this project happens to own this elevator, so we had access.  Some of the timbers were just lying around.  12x6 pine!  This is not something that can be purchased, and here it is, old and grey and waiting...

How do you make antique timbers?

First build an elevator.  Then stop using that elevator.  Leave that elevator to feel the full brunt of prairie weather (hot and dry, dry and cold, dry and windy...) for about 85 years.

Then salvage and enjoy.