Deconstructing a building is like an architectural gross anatomy lesson. It’s fascinating to see all internal components of a building as layer by layer is peeled away. The most striking feature is their skeletons which (in Buffalo) are almost always composed of long, hefty boards and beams of hemlock. Aged hemlock has a leather-brown patina due to oxidation of the tannins in the wood and a rough splintery texture. Hemlock is by nature a coarse, fibrous wood but as a structural wood it was usually left rough sawn. Cutting through a piece reveals mellow, honey-like color, slightly browner than pine, again because of the high tannin content.

What is probably most impressive about these old hemlock beams is the large widths, thicknesses and lengths. 30 foot long, knot-free, 6”x 6” is common in most old houses. Much of Buffalo ReUse’s hemlock lumber is floor joists, two and three inches by ten or twelve inches and up to twenty feet long. I believe it’s fair to say that Buffalo’s real backbone is hemlock and not steel.

What is hemlock? Tsuga canadensis or Eastern Hemlock is a fast-growing conifer (produces seed-bearing cones) like a pine tree. Despite its name, hemlock is not poisonous but is named “hemlock” because its needles smell similar to the leaves of the deadly poisonous hemlock vine – reportedly the source of bane that killed Socrates. Hemlock is described as “yew-like” because its needles are broad and soft, and more leaf-like. Its bark is deeply fissured and was once considered more valuable than the tree. Leather makers used the bark because of its high tannic acid content and often trees were stripped and left to die.

Hemlocks readily grow to 100 feet tall, and exceptional ones can be 170 feet tall. They grow very densely in cool, humid areas near water, especially around the Great Lakes and the Atlantic sea coasts. Those dense old-growth forests covered the northeast and must have been cursed by the early American pioneers as they hacked their way through them. The density and darkness of old-growth hemlock forests were legendary, and probably the reason why hemlock stands were often the scenes of nefarious meetings and dealings among colonial writers.

If I may detour a little, I’d like to quote a favorite author, Washington Irving, and his story The Devil and Tom Walker. Irving’s 1824 description of an old-growth hemlock forest near Boston is the image I have always held in my mind.

One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of the neighborhood, he took what he considered a short-cut homeward, through the swamp. Like most short-cuts, it was an ill-chosen route. The swamp was thickly grown with great, gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them ninety feet high, which made it dark at noonday and a retreat for all the owls of the neighborhood. It was full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green surface often betrayed the traveler into a gulf of black, smothering mud; there were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole, the bull-frog, and the water-snake, where the trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half-drowned, half-rotting, looking like alligators sleeping in the mire.

Tom meets the devil on his detour and sells his soul for a life of wealth. Afterwards Tom develops buyer’s remorse and attempts to renegotiate with old Scratch. Like so many scoundrels though, he flees into the same hemlock stand and disappears forever.

The ReUse collects, on average, 8 tons of hemlock per house deconstructed. Although not a generally considered a woodworker’s primary wood, it’s really a nice wood suitable for construction or craft. Hemlock has inherently good working characteristics. It cuts, turns and carves well and is strong and dense and resistant to rot. The only real challenge to ReUsed wood is to make sure it is fully de-nailed. The ReSource de-nails wood as fully as possible, but there is always the possibility of a nail, piece of barbed wire, bullet or other metallic bit hiding in the wood.

As structural wood old hemlock is very suitable. For the old house buffs for whom authenticity is a must, these hemlock elements are as legit as you can get – they are the correct species and dimensions for historically correct repairs.

Aged hemlock has a some unique qualities of its own. It is denser, stronger, and more rot resistant because it came from old-growth trees. The rough brown patina of the surface is quite desirable and cannot be mimicked convincingly. A quick internet search and I found hemlock wood in projects such as personal saunas, decking, furniture, compost bins, cabins etc…essentially anywhere you want a rustic look. The Patina can also be removed and the hemlock (often knot free) can be worked into more polished woodworking projects such as furniture, spindles, stair treads, flooring, etc. Remember the honey-colored middle? Well, when finished, the wood’s honey-leather color comes up beautifully and its surface is randomly punctuated with tiny dark capillaries here and there. And finally if desired there are nail holes and ferric staining, which I personally like.

At between thirty and fifty cents a board foot, the ReUsed hemlock is a deal. Importantly this second harvest of hemlock is a tribute to the great old-growth forests, like that described by Washington Irving. ReUse of hemlock takes pressure off our modern-day forests, and re-harvesting uses magnitudes less energy than harvesting and transporting new hemlock. Finally, economically this Re-harvest also utilizes local resources, employs local people to harvest it, and removes blight and builds neighborhoods in the process.

Maybe its time to change my mental image of hemlocks.