Reclaimed Antique Heart Pine

The origin of antique heart pine

When the early colonists first arrived to the American South, they encountered vast forests of southern longleaf pine, the source of heart pine. These forests, which once dominated the South, existed throughout the coastal plains from southern Virginia to eastern Texas, covering more than 90 million acres. Today, hardly any of the original forests remain, the last of these great forests having been clear cut and logged by 1920. These majestic trees grew slowly for several centuries, often producing only an inch of growth rings every 25 to 30 years. Longleaf pines could reach 160 feet in height and 400 to 500 years of age.

The wood that came to be in demand

As the British colonies, and later, the United States, came into being and began to grow, the colonists quickly discovered the enormous value of the tall but relatively slender pines. Due to its densely grained heartwood, strength and durability, heart pine was originally used as lumber and masts for shipbuilding. As colonization of these areas spread, old-growth heart pine was increasingly used in the construction of log homes and later for other residential and commercial buildings. Heart pine at one time was used as framing material in the vast majority of homes built in North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

Heart pine became increasingly important during the second half of the 19th century, as the American industrial revolution came into full swing. Almost all industrial buildings east of the Mississippi were constructed with heart pine providing the framework and flooring. These buildings housed textile mills, warehouses, fertilizer plants and many other types of manufacturing. A beautiful wood, heart pine was also used extensively for exposed millwork and flooring in prominent homes and hotels, where it can be admired to this day. Many ships, often built with heart pine, sailed along the Eastern seaboard and over to Europe using heart pine logs as ballast. As they unloaded their cargo in places like Bremen and Hamburg, they also unloaded their ballast and sold it. As a result, there are buildings in Europe that were built from southern heart pine.

Until the late 19th century, rivers provided the best method of transportation of felled heart pine logs. Loggers searched increasingly further inland for the beautiful trees and established landings next to river banks, where the felled logs could be tied together into big rafts that were then floated downriver to the waiting sawmills. In what must have been back braking work, canals were sometimes dug by the logging crews in order to float the logs to the river.

Old-growth pine forests were also tapped for their resin, which was used extensively in the manufacturing of products ranging from paints and soaps to medicines. The US remained the world's leading producer of naval stores until well into the 20th century.

Today's heart pine

Less than 10,000 acres of original growth longleaf pine remain in protected forests. Clear cutting of the original vast forests continued into the 20th century until around 1917, when the supply of heart pine was nearly exhausted. Today, the only source of this unique building material is from reclamation of old buildings or from logs sunk during transportation in rivers on their way to the sawmill.

Special Hardwood reclaims its heart pine from pre-1915 non-historical buildings slated for demolition, such as textile mills no longer in use. The old framework timbers are shipped to our facility in South Carolina, where all metal is removed. The beams are then re-sawn into lumber blanks, which are sent to our European manufacturer, where the blanks are sawn into wear layers and used in the manufacturing of HeartPlank® wood flooring.