KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

I am often reminded of a cartoon I saw years ago of a Gatling gun salesman trying to talk to a Commander on a medieval battlefield where a war is being fought with arrows and swords.  The Commander says something like “I don’t have time to talk to a salesman, I have a battle to fight”.

Getting the opportunity to speak to a group of architects can be an arduous task, involving many phone calls and emails, often spanning months.  In my situation I am not “selling” a thing you can look up in a catalog.  I am, rather, presenting the story of the finest sustainable American hardwood for cabinetry, flooring, millwork and furniture – Quartersawn.  Once I have actually scheduled a presentation, I find that my audiences are attentive, polite and very grateful for the information I present.  I talk about the sustainability of American hardwoods, its carbon sequestration and the beauty and durability of Quartersawn in varied applications.  The thread that ties it all together is the truth.  I always tell my audiences that I serve as someone upon whom they can call to get truth about specifications for hardwoods.  If I am approached to give advice about American hardwoods in design and the application is simply not compatible with the nature of the species in question, I will tell them so.  Architects and Designers can’t be experts in every material with which they work, so I offer that resource for free to help them make good decisions at the beginning of the project.

I tell a wonderful story about American Hardwoods that needs no white lie embellishments.  For example, I was in a meeting in New York recently discussing the specifications for 300,000 square feet of Quartersawn White Oak flooring for a building.  The specification was for one width, all color and grain matched flooring to be produced in 26 months.  I did some rough math and told the person with whom I was meeting that their specification represented about  .0001 % of any Quartersawn log, so the specification was impossible to meet in that time frame, if ever.  He was grateful that I told him the truth, as he had two flooring companies tell him that they could deliver that flooring according to the specification.  This may have been wishful thinking on their part.

The architecture and design community face a barrage of product information, some of which can be misleading, causing problems during the final execution of their project.  What they want to hear once they have granted me access to their office and precious time is true and valuable information, which I am honored to offer.

When I lecture about Quartersawn American hardwoods I get to tell the wonderful story about sustainable forest management at the same time.  Before I can make the case for Quartersawn hardwood as the most durable and beautiful form of hardwoods it is important that I talk about the carbon footprint of bringing that hardwood to market.

As a tree grows it absorbs carbon as part of photosynthesis.  As the tree reaches its peak of maturity the amount of carbon it will absorb in its lifetime diminishes.  In successful management of the resource, those mature trees are harvested, opening the canopy so that light will get to the forest floor and new trees will take their place and begin anew the carbon absorption process.  As that harvested tree is rendered into boards, kiln dried and eventually made into flooring, millwork, cabinetry and furniture, the absorbed carbon is captured forever (unless the manufactured piece burns).

In general terms, when balanced against the carbon costs of harvest, sawmilling, drying and even transportation around the globe, American hardwoods arrive at their destination as a carbon negative product.  This means that even when all of the production carbon costs are applied, the lumber still has plenty of stored carbon in it.  One could argue that when someone imports quartersawn hardwoods from Indiana into Singapore for a project, they are actually importing carbon credits.

I am often asked around the world about the carbon costs of transportation.  I explain that there are economies of scale at work when 11,000 board feet of quartersawn White Oak is put in a container in Indiana, loaded on a train with hundreds of other containers and ultimately put on a ship with thousands of other containers.  The carbon cost of transportation per container is drastically reduced in this case.  That same amount of White Oak put on the road on a tractor-trailer represents an enormous comparative carbon footprint.

For more detail on this topic, I highly recommend that you visit the website for the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) and read all about their exhaustive, detailed, peer reviewed LCA (Life Cycle Assessment).  That web address is www.americanhardwood.org .  This site also offers a wealth of information about American hardwoods species and case studies of application.

Carbon sequestration is just one of the many facets of the positive role that hardwoods play in green design.

When I talk to architects and designers about using American hardwoods I am usually battling preconceived notions of how our forest resource is managed in the United States.  The destruction of the rain forests taints the picture of sustainable American hardwoods.  The media has done a great job of convincing people that when we use a tree we are killing the planet in some small way.  The information I present involves a great deal of counter intuition.

For example, due to societal conditioning, it seems counter intuitive to suggest that the more you utilize our forest resource, the healthier the forests become.  It is also counter intuitive to say that there is twice as much hardwood growing now than there was 50 years ago in America.  Another part of my presentation that seems counter intuitive is that when it is time to harvest hardwood trees from a particular stand of hardwoods, the tree chosen is the most beautiful mature tree.  To many this feels like killing Bambi.

First, the destruction of the rain forest has far more to do with conversion of the forest to agricultural purposes than random timber harvest.  Second, it is through selection harvest that we keep our forests healthy.  The more we systematically remove the mature trees, the more new growth is encouraged.  When we harvest trees at their peak of life, we capture the carbon that the tree has been dutifully absorbing all of its life.  Once that tree has been rendered into boards and then into a piece of furniture, the carbon is captured forever.

It seems counter intuitive that the sound of a chain saw in a mature stand of American hardwoods is actually indicative of healthy forest management.  Even more counter intuitive that American hardwood can ship from Indiana and arrive in Australia as a carbon negative building product.  This is due to the amount of carbon stored in the wood versus the carbon footprint of the sawmilling, drying and transportation on of the wood.

The good thing about dealing with all of this counter intuitive information is that it is all empirically verifiable.  I tell my audiences that they all have a way to assess the health of America’s forests – Google Earth™.  Just pick any state in the eastern US and fly across it and you will see miles and miles of healthy hardwood forests.  If I were one to put bumper stickers on my car, mine might read: “Save The Planet – Use More American Hardwoods.”

I have been in the hardwood business for nearly 26 years.  The last 4 years have been spent talking to designers and architects about using sustainable American hardwoods in their designs for residences, hotels, restaurants, museums and public buildings of all sorts.  I am struck occasionally by the fact that designers and architects are willing to subjugate their aesthetic vision to the economies of substituting inferior materials in the most visible parts of their projects., such as flooring.

I have visited beautiful job sites where the least expensive, lowest quality flooring has been installed, presumably to save money.  Naturally, if I were looking at tract housing, where every economy must be utilized, I completely understand.  However, when the floors in question are installed in multi million dollar residences or gorgeous hotel, I can’t help but think that the people involved with the realization of the designers’ vision are simply looking at the world through the wrong end of the binoculars.  Saving money in the short term, while having to refinish or replace the flooring within a few years, is shortsighted.

I was in Japan recently and ate lunch at what is considered to be one of the finest Sushi restaurants in Tokyo.  We went there because they serve wonderful seafood in an elegant setting.  No one in the party would want the chef to purchase inferior seafood and this chef certainly purchased the best.  There was no question about how much we would pay for the lunch.  We paid what he charged us for lunch and we were very happy.

It is the same for a piece of fine furniture or beautiful floor.  Find the best manufacturer, one with a stellar reputation, and pay him what he charges for the best quality.  When I started selling lumber in the 80’s I would call on small manufacturers who thought that they would make more money if they could only purchase their lumber for less money.  They would battle on price while their employees were smoking on company time in the parking lot, talking about a football game.  That was where the profit margins were going, not to the price of the raw material.  I tried, occasionally with success, to get them to turn the binoculars around and see the situation clearly.  The idea is to purchase the best raw material, focus on using that material to produce the nicest flooring, furniture or millwork and charge what you think it is worth without apology.

The best hardwood produced in the US is quartersawn hardwood.  Design with it and make sure that those who produce your vision use it.  Pay what it costs to work with the best hardwood.  The finished product will be beautiful and last for centuries.

In the world of figured hardwoods, there has always been this spectre hanging around in the shadows.  It presents itself in the inevitable clash between the imagined look of the lumber and what actually turns up at the plant or workshop.  Many years ago I sold figured and exotic hardwoods to a variety of woodworkers.  If, for example, I took an order for “bird’s eye Maple”, I would often get the complaint that the lumber was either too figured or not figured enough.  Once, we shipped about 50 board feet of Ash to a large store fixture manufacturer and it was gorgeously figured, unusual for Ash.  It was part of a much larger delivery of Ash, but I received a call from the buyer who said that their shop loved the figured Ash and made a prototype of a table from it for a large retail chain.  Naturally, they showed the table to their customer who loved it and said that they would take 800 of them as soon as they could be produced.  The buyer called me the next day and said that he wanted to buy thousands of board feet of Ash “to match the figured Ash from the last load”.   He was crestfallen when I explained that there was no chance of replicating that look out of our general supply of Ash in the warehouse.  If I called our supplier he would say the same thing.  That lumber represented one anomalous tree that stood in the forest for nearly 80 years developing, for whatever reasons, that beautiful “curl” in the grain.  Thus is the nature of figured hardwoods, a group in which Frank Miller Lumber is a very big player.

There are rules of thumb for how quartersawn hardwoods are supposed to look based on the angle of the end grain as it relates to the face of the board.  There are rules also, in White and Red Oak, about how “quartered” and “rift” appearance is designated.  It is very difficult to meet every customer’s expectations for how much figure is enough, in the case of “quartered” or how little figure shows in “rift”.  In a conversation today with a colleague, she compared figured hardwoods to flowers.  While it would be good, she supposed, if every rose looked exactly the same, it was an unrealistic expectation.  If you can let that uniform expectation go and revel instead in the varieties of rose hues and shapes, you will be amazed at how beautiful a garden can be.

I will continue to extol the many virtues of quartersawn hardwoods, not in their uniformity, but rather their unique and varied appearance qualities.

I have an immensely interesting job.  I get to talk with designers and architects about using American hardwoods in projects all over the world.  After several years I am finally being invited into design meetings as hotels are taking shape.  There are several projects with which I am involved now that are for well-known international architecture and interior design firms who are doing work for equally well-known hotel companies.  I am not at liberty to give names of firms or the projects, but trust me when I say that these projects are immensely complicated.  The hardwood component in the form of millwork, furniture, flooring and cabinetry requires a great deal of consideration because of the various grades that are generated out of each log that is cut.  I preach that it is prudent on a large project to connect to the mill in order to establish the realities of the resource and how it relates to the project timelines and budgets.

Quite often the hardwoods are discussed very early on in the project and if a specification is at variance with the realities of the resource, no one from the hardwood industry is there to say so.  Now I am there to help filter the unbridled imagination of architects and designers through the often painful “funnel of reality” so that the aesthetic vision for the hardwoods jibes with the end product.

After three days in New York this week I came to the conclusion that the organizing all of the information involved with a huge hotel project is a bit like herding cats.  You can have one aspect of the project settled, then a different aspect changes and a domino effect of changes have to take place to accommodate that change.  There are endless proposals and reworks based on budget price points and owners ever-changing aesthetic or operational sensibility.   The natural variation in hardwoods needs to be built into the design process at several different cost levels and this requires careful thought and precise wording in proposals.

Recently. in a design meeting about a very large hotel property in Saudi Arabia I was asked if Quartersawn White Oak could be used not only in the guest room floors, but in the bathrooms as well.  Because of its resistance to water and stability in Quartersawn form, I said that with careful installation it could be used in the bathroom up to the sink.  The lead designer said that she wanted to use Quartersawn White Oak in the shower floor and around the toilet as well.  I had to tell her that while it would be an interesting experiment in one bathroom in a private residence, doing it in 350 guest rooms in a 5 star hotel represented a high probability of failure.  In the end, the fact that Quartersawn White Oak couldn’t be used in the showers and around the toilets literally changed the design for the guest rooms and therefore the entire aesthetic design of the hotel.

In the coming months I will be out in the world of architecture and design, helping to “herd cats”.  I will share more stories like this, representing the challenges and successes of that process, with you.

Hardwood Floors Offer Beauty and Versatility

While some manufactured flooring attempts to imitate hardwood, there no substitute for American hardwood floors made from verifiably sustainable American hardwoods.

There are myriad hardwood flooring choices available in today’s market and American Red and White Oak are among the most popular choices. Bamboo is often touted as a rapidly renewable alternative to American hardwoods due to their 10-year growth cycle.  However, Bamboo is not a hardwood at all, rather a grass.  The carbon footprint of its transformation from grass to a flooring material is far greater than of any hardwood.  This transformation includes the use of adhesives and production methods that are far from environmentally friendly.  American hardwood floors are the most durable, sustainable and beautiful floors available.

Hardwood Sawing Methods Make a Difference

The way in which wood is sawn determines its appearance. Plain or “flat” sawing is the most common hardwood log sawing technique. Sawn from the outside-in with the log’s growth rings parallel to the board’s broad face, plain-sawn lumber typically features a more uniform, arched grain pattern, commonly known as “Cathedral grain”. While plainsawing produces wider boards than quartersawing, it is prone to cupping and warping over time.

Quartersawn hardwood has a more distinct straight-grained look, as it is cut perpendicular to the tree’s growth rings. This process produces quartersawn hardwood’s most important characteristic – a “shimmering” effect, created by the increased exposure of the log’s medullary  rays.  The perpendicular geometric relationship between the angle of the log’s growth rings to the face of the board is what makes a quartersawn floor more stable. Expansion and contraction of quartersawn wood will only occur vertically, therefore reducing movement in width, cupping and warping.  As a result, quartersawn hardwoods are often used in high-traffic environments and regions where the climate experiences more volatile humidity.

The Hardwood Advantage

Aside from their natural beauty and durability, hardwood floors are relatively easy to clean and maintain, while eliminating carpet-captured allergens. They are also adaptable to just about any type of décor.  Hardwood flooring increases the value of a home and is very attractive to prospective homebuyers.

Hardwood floors have stood the test of time.  There are quartersawn oak floors around the globe, for instance that are still in service after centuries of use.  A friend just returned from France where he toured some chateaus in the Loire Valley that get more than a million visitors per year.  Those visitors are walking on Quartersawn White Oak floors that have been there for more than 500 years and they are still beautiful, flat and tight.  Aesthetically and practically, hardwood has been a preferred flooring surface throughout the ages in every corner of the globe.  The most beautiful aspect of hardwood floors is that there is nearly twice as much hardwood growing in the US now than was growing 50 years ago.  This is a truly sustainable, durable and beautiful product.

Thoughts about the three main similarities between humans and trees:

American Hardwood trees are like humans in three distinct and profound ways:

1. Both are mostly water
2. Both have a peak life span of approximately 80 years
3. Both are completely unique

Let’s talk about items #2 and #3.  While humans can live longer than 80 years, trees can also.  However, past this peak life span,  trees and humans are both vulnerable to disease and injury, generally declining in health.

A symbiotic relationship exists between trees and humans.  Humans breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, while trees breathe in carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen.  During a tree’s life span it has been absorbing carbon diligently and when it passes its peak and declines in health it begins to leach its stored carbon back into the atmosphere.  While it seems counterintuitive, proper sustainable management of the forest begins with the extraction of the trees closest to their peak life.  In harvesting those beautiful, healthy mature trees when they have basically stored all of the carbon they will store in life, you not only allow for sunlight to get to the forest floor, thereby encouraging fresh growth, but you capture the carbon in that tree forever, even as the tree is transformed into various wood products.  The only way the stored carbon in hardwood products will ever be released is through fire.

The forests of the United States have been well managed for more than a century through “selection cutting”, which means the extraction of the mature trees rather than clear cutting.  By taking only those trees closest to their peak life, new growth takes its place.  For every tree that is harvested in the United States, 1.9 trees take its place through natural regeneration.  As a result of this careful management of the forest resource, there is nearly twice as much hardwood growing in the United States now as compared to 50 years ago.

The third and most important similarity between humans and trees is that each tree, like each human, is unique and beautiful in its own way.  To assume a post-industrial revolution mindset in the design process, that all hardwood flooring, for example, needs look the same, is to invite heartache and disappointment.  Every tree, based on the soil in which it grew, the length of its growing season, and general environment will develop different colors, no matter how slight.  If a designer or architect revels in the unique nature of hardwoods instead of fighting this natural variation, they will be rewarded with a space or piece of furniture that will never be duplicated.

Those of us who are fortunate enough to be a part of the hardwood business can feel proud of the fact that with every tree harvested, rendered into boards, kiln dried and made into flooring, millwork, doors or furniture, we are actually making forests healthier and bringing beauty to the world.

I have told architects for several years the sad story of a large home being built in 2001 for a very famous celebrity. When I was still selling lumber for Frank Miller Lumber I was called by all of the hardwood flooring suppliers in the region, all looking for lumber for 10,000 square feet of rift sawn white oak flooring for the house. Simply put, the specifications for the rift sawn white oak flooring could never be met. I told everyone the truth in the hopes that the specifications would change and come down to reality. The specs didn’t change, because one distributor kept calling mills until someone said “we have that lumber”.

The flooring manufacturer was shipped lumber that did not resemble the specification except that it was white oak. Now desperate, he tried his best to satisfy the contractor, who tried to satisfy the celebrity homeowner. Making a long, painful story short, no one was satisfied. The hardwood flooring manufacturer went bankrupt waiting to get paid and the contractor wound up in court for years, fighting for the remaining $1.5 million owed on the job.

Why did I title this blog “The Bugatti Veyron”?  Because the Bugatti is my dream car, in the same way this house was a dream house for this family.  Let’s pretend I had $1.5 million to buy this car and put down a hefty deposit, ordering a cobalt blue Bugatti.  I would have to wait 9 months for the car to arrive, as only 6 are imported each year.  A call from the dealer tells me that my car has arrived.  I go to the dealer, give him the balance owed and he hands me the keys.  The dealer then points to a cherry red Bugatti in the lot, not the cobalt blue Bugatti I ordered.  When I complain about the color, the dealer says that while it isn’t the color I wanted, it is still a Bugatti.   I have the option of waiting another 9 months in the hope of getting the color I want or driving away in the red car.  Of course I take the car.  However, no matter how much I might love my Bugatti, I would still be upset every time I get in it, because it isn’t what I ordered.

The same would be true for the family with an expansive floor that doesn’t look anything like the floor they ordered. Yes, it is still white oak, but no one told them that they couldn’t have the special rift sawn white oak flooring they ordered until it was too late. The moral of the story is to minimize heartache and disappointment by running reality checks on your aesthetic vision at the very beginning of the project.