Reclaimed Heart Pine
Over a century in the making
Genuine reclaimed Heart Pine has been crafted out of 100 year old beams and decking salvaged from historic buildings across rural America. Through laborious and time-consuming techniques, CRAFT’s artisans are able to restore by hand this wonderful resource, preserving a moment in time from the past so it can be cherished for generations to come. Our craftsmen are committed to taking America’s Heart Pine, now all but gone from its native forests, and giving it a new life.
American Long Leaf Pine, commonly known as Heart Pine, played an important role in American history as the United States began to industrialize and become one of the world’s manufacturing powerhouses. Despite the fact that Heart Pine lumber comes from a coniferous tree, and is therefore classified as a softwood, Heart Pine exhibits tremendous strength and hardness, ranking 1225 on the Janka hardness scale, putting it ahead of several hardwood lumber species such as Teak, English Oak and Red Maple.
Given Heart Pine’s exceptional strength on the one hand, and ease of woodworking on the other, it quickly became the species of choice for the heavy beams, posts and other structural members of the numerous cotton mills, factories and warehouses that sprang up across the land as America began to industrialize in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
As the United States continued to industrialize, the appetite for heart pine proceeded unabated, to the point where almost every stand of Heart Pine forest had been clear cut and stripped of all trees. Through over harvesting and other forms of habitat encroaching, today Heart Pine has been reduced to less than 3% of its original range. This fact makes the centuries-old lumber, reclaimed from the old mills and factories now being taken down, all the more precious.
