Sinker Cypress Logs and Milling -

For more about sinker cypress:

Sinker Cypress Slabs for mantles, tables and other special projects

Retrieving Sinker Logs- See how it's done

Here's "Mighty Mo" - one of our 'trucking dogs' - helping out. And over there to the right is his buddy Max (whom we 'lost' last year - we miss him a lot), helping to measure out one of the beams. These guys come with us everywhere - the other 8 dogs we have stay home and mind the dogtrot!

Check out beautiful tidewater cypress pecky used in a customer's home addition.

Recently, we purchased and milled sinker cypress logs - here are some photos we took that illustrate the beauty of this lumber and the hard work involved in its milling.

Click on pictures to see enlarged view.

These logs were reclaimed from the Florida Panhandle region southwest of Tallahassee. Sinker logs are kept in the river or in holding ponds until ready for milling. Sinker logs are those that, logged up to 200 years ago from virgin timbers, were floated downriver to the mills at the river's mouth. Sinker logs, as you might guess, sank to the river bottom along the way, and are now retrieved with pain-staking effort by divers who dislodge them from the silt and sand that has over the years been absorbed by the lumber, giving sinker cypress its distinctive color qualities. Sinker cypress, and sinker pine, can be found in the rivers and bayous that edge the Gulf of Mexico from Florida to Texas.

In addition to the cut beams, slabs and 1"x material, check out the size of the logs! Jim had to work all morning just to position the log to be properly cut - you can't just lay it down and start slicing. Because of laying on the bottom so long, some of the centers have rotted out and are filled with mud. Jim was a milling artist!

This is Pecky Sinker Cypress - usually sinker pecky has larger holes in it. Confused with wormwood, Pecky Cypress - whether sinker or tidewater - is caused by a fungus that eats holes in the wood. We sell a lot of it for paneling, beams etc. Furniture makers and hobbiests love its unusual look!

Quarter sawn sinker cypress is very special - it creates a true vertical grained board. To properly quarter-saw a log it is cut down the middle, and lengthwise again. Then each time it is cut, the quartered length of log is turned, so that each board has vertical grains (i.e. straight grain). As you might expect this is a more time consuming thus more costly cut of lumber.

Below are pictures of the logs being milled into beams for our customer in Texas. Some of the beams were 34'! Huge logs requiring lots of work by the miller. You will also notice a lot of 1" off cuts, and some slabs. This lumber, much of which is book-matched, is available. Give us a call to learn more about Sinker Cypress, Pecky Sinker Cypress, and some of the lumber we currently have available - 985-986-9945.