River Logs?

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prajna101

Member
Hearth Supporter
Oct 15, 2009
137
Portland OR
From a CL ad
(broken link removed to http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/zip/1625607782.html)
See below.

I am not planning on going for these, but it made me think. Would old river logs, like what is used under float homes, be ok for firewood? Buck them up, split them, let them season. Any thoughts about accumulation of river gunk? How about spending years in the water? Hmm. Just wondering.




Now available in front of our warehouse...Old River Logs---

One is 25 feet long --3 feet thick...

The other is 18 feet long---3 feet thick....


YOU cut up....YOU haul away...


1300 N. River Street 97227...

Directly under Fremont/405 bridge..
Next to Ross Island Sand & Gravel...

First come...Fisrt served....

503-282-1001.........

* Location: Lower Overlook
* it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

image 1625607782-0 image 1625607782-1
 
I think they would be fine but but they will be hard to pick up. Waterlogged logs would be mighty heavy. They might be also hard on chains as they might have sand embedded in them.
When they logged off this part of the state to rebuild Chicago alot of logs were sunk in the rivers and Lake Michigan and people have recovered some and cut them for lumber. Not often you can find any 30in clear boards in the trees now days. They usually only cut and floated the pine and cut that for lumber as the transportation was by water. The hardwood was burnt in big fires cause those logs wouldn't float. Huge maples, oaks, beech, ash, etc that would be worth fortunes today was just hauled aside when the farmers came after the loggers. They made there fences out of the HUGE pine stumps. You can still find some of the old stumps in fence rows. I have one in my yard for an ornament. The pine from west Michigan built the cities of the Midwest. To see some of the pic's and see the HUGE trees that they cut by hand makes logging look easy nowadays. They dammed up every little steam, ran narrow gauge tracks, and skidded on snow so they could dump them in the rivers. Then they floated them to Lake Michigan to be cut and put on schooners for Chicago. Lots of them sunk in the storms.
leaddog
 
If they sank and sat deep in cool water they're probably fairly well preserved.
Those look short so probably no good for lumber. Some of that old wood is pretty valuable.
They have notches like they may have been bridge framing or something at one time.

If they were in salt water I'd not even look. Besides the salt you'd have pier worms, unless the water was so polluted the worms died, then the logs would be undesirable, too.
 
I would not be interested in something like that.
 
I would take it and use semi chisel chain..
 
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