What is special about cypress wood?
Cypress wood is very durable, stable, and water- and rot-resistant, making it suitable for building and heavy construction. Other uses where its properties make it a good choice include caskets, piers, bridges, boats, siding, sashes, doors, stadium seats, posts, cooperage and railroad ties.
What is the value of cypress wood?
New cypress sells for about $2 a board foot. Felled by a natural disaster before people walked these parts, the forest of trees has been radiocarbon-dated at up to 40,000 years old.
What are old cypress logs worth?
Commercial retail prices range from two to five dollars per board foot. By the time high-quality sinker cypress wood reaches a California show room, it can range from eight to fourteen dollars per board foot.
Why are sunken cypress logs valuable?
Cool water perfectly preserves what are known as sinker logs, which lay on river bottoms for hundreds of years. These magnificent sinker cypress and sinker pine logs are considered to be buried treasure, because once recovered, they yield the richest patina of any wood.
Is cypress better than cedar?
Old-growth cypress is rated as being very durable — more durable than cedar — but it’s hard to find and expensive. Younger cypress is rated as moderately durable. Cedar has a pleasant, aromatic scent while being worked, while freshly cut cypress has a somewhat sour odor.
How do you identify cypress?
If you have ever smelled cedar or juniper wood, then you know the Cypress family. These are mostly evergreen trees or shrubs with small, scaly leaves and separate male and female cones, sometimes on separate trees. The seed cones are typically woody or leathery, with one to several seeds behind each scale.
Which is more expensive cypress or cedar?
Cypress is usually less expensive, but it depends on where you live. If you live in the Northwest where cedar is readily available, cypress may be more expensive. If you live in the eastern United States where cypress is readily available, it’s typically less expensive than cedar.
How can you tell cypress wood?
Color/Appearance: Color tends to be a light, yellowish brown. Sapwood is nearly white. Some boards can have scattered pockets of darker wood that have been attacked by fungi, which is sometimes called pecky cypress. Grain/Texture: Straight grain and medium texture to coarse texture.
Why is waterlogged wood so valuable?
Lake bottoms are often low oxygen environments, and without oxygen to support fungi and wood boring worms, the logs can last for centuries without rotting. These preserved logs are valuable because they produce wood, when salvaged by divers and sawn up, that hasn’t been available for a century or more.
What can I do with cypress wood?
What are old cypress logs used for?
Inevitably, many of the timbers broke loose and tumbled to river bottoms or became embedded in riverbanks. They are now perfectly preserved specimens prized for milling into tables, mantles, bed frames, flooring and bar surfaces.
Is cypress A good exterior wood?
Cypress. Cypress wood is rot and insect resistant attributable to its natural oils. “Cypress, despite being a softer wood, is still a great option for making outdoor furniture, because it’s a light wood with pretty grain pattern, which makes a great visual impact.
Why is pecky cypress so valuable?
Pecky cypress is one of the most valuable southern U.S. woods simply because a fungus creates a pattern of pockets, that when sawn for lumber, people find very appealing. Pecky cypress doors, garage doors, and furniture is unique and there is a significant demand for it.
How much is a cypress tree worth?
Here is a price sheet from a supplier in the heart of Cypress country. See that price 1×12×10′. They are selling Cypress for $2 a bf. Not valuable by any definition. Not til it is shipped 1000 miles to a land that does not have much demand and has gone through a few middle men it’s several times it’s original value.
What are the qualities of cypress wood used to build Windows?
I am using Cypress to build storm windows. For that purpose, it has good qualities — it is light, rot, insect and weather resistant, easy to work, and finishes well. 8 clever moves when you have $1,000 in the bank.
Is Cypress a hardwood or softwood?
Cypress trees are conifers, but unlike most American softwoods, they are deciduous trees that shed foliage in the fall like hardwoods. Although cypress is a softwood, it grows alongside hardwoods and is traditionally grouped and manufactured with hardwoods.