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Recycling has big trees beaming

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(by Christopher Shulgan, The Bulletin)

Kris Calvin is a man in love with timber.

Derwyn Hanney is breaking his heart.

Kris Calvin is the owner of Earthwood Homes, a Sisters-based timber framing company that "recycles" old lumber. Sometimes, Calvin needs big beams. Big beams come from big, 200- to 300-year-old trees, and the problem is that most old-growth timber has already been harvested. That makes, big, new beams expensive and hard to find. So Calvin buys big, new old beams — he buys recycled timber from contractors who have salvaged the hard-to-find beams from demolished buildings.

In August, Calvin bought nine titanic beams of Douglas fir from a contractor who salvaged the lumber from a parking structure in Salem.

"These are the biggest beams we've ever bought," Calvin said. "We don't think it will ever happen to us again, getting beams of this size."

The biggest beam is 52 feet long, three feet wide and 16 inches thick. Calvin said the wood from such massive beams would make the beams worth from $11,000 to up to $17,000 for one nearly knotless, high-quality beam.

The beams bring up a painful dilemma for Calvin "The material is of such high quality that the beams have greater market value if they are cut down in size," Calvin said.

So, before the beams can be sold, they must be milled — cut up — and for a timber lover like Calvin that prospect disturbed him enough that he assigned the duty to fellow timber framer Derwyn Hanney.

I couldn't do it," Calvin said. "It's kind of like harvesting the last whale or something."

Alaskan-born Calvin founded Earthwood Homes in 1990 after he worked for three years for a lumber framing company in Maine. The company has built homes, businesses and even a Swedish bell tower with old-world craftsmanship — Calvin and his employees use wood mallets, oak pegs, and mortise and tenon joints to join their lumber together rather than hammer and nails.

Earthwood Homes is one of about 12 timber recyclers in Oregon, according to Mike Staton, project manager for Eugene's Station Companies, which sold Earthwood the Douglas fir beams.

For many years, Calvin said, salvage operators would demolish buildings and toss the timber into landfills, letting even the largest beams go to waste.

Remembering this, Calvin shook his head as though he was watching someone toss $20 dollar bills down a sewer grate. "Then (the salvage operators) got calls from people like me who said, don't throw that stuff away — let's use that stuff. Give it to me," he said.

Timber recycling is good for the environment — using recycled timber cuts down on the amount of new growth harvested. But it has other advantages also. To such firms as Staton Companies, recycling timber from the buildings it demolishes makes its work significantly cheaper.

Recycled timber also has its aesthetic disadvantages, according to Portland architect Doug Skidmore.

Skidmore is working with Earthwood to build a home on Blue Lake, 10 miles west of Sisters, for Dan Wieden, the advertising guru whose firm, Wieden and Kennedy, handles advertising for Nike and Coca-Cola.

Since recycled timber has already been used, it has nail holes and other scars from its previous uses. Once the recycled timber is milled and sanded, Skidmore said, the used timber has a character that new timber cannot match.

For craftsmen like Calvin, recycled timber also is easier to work with. Green, moisture-laden timber can warp and twist. But recycled timber is dry, so it keeps its shape after it is milled.

And presumably that makes Earthwood Homes customers such as Wieden very happy.

Earthwood Homes will use five of the nine beams in Wieden's 4,500-square-foot home on Blue Lake.

"We've got to wait for the right job for the others," Calvin said. "If there's some way to hold onto one or two just so they don't get cut up — we'd like to do just that."