Plate VI · Salvage & ironwork
Reclaimed barn wood & forged hardware
How we take down, sort and grade threshing floors, hewn beams and siding from 19th-century Pennsylvania bank barns, and the iron we forge to go with them.
Where our salvage comes from
Lancaster County is full of bank barns, the big two-level barns built into a hillside so wagons could drive straight onto the upper floor from the uphill side. Many of ours were raised between about 1850 and 1900. When an owner decides a barn cannot be saved, we take it down by hand, board by board and timber by timber, and we record where each piece came from.
A barn gives up three kinds of material: the frame (posts, beams, plates and braces), the threshing floor (thick planks on the upper level), and the siding (boards nailed to the outside of the frame). Each one is graded differently.
Threshing-floor planks
The threshing floor is where grain was beaten out of the straw, first with hand flails and later with machines. The planks are usually white oak, often 2 in. thick and 10 in. to 14 in. wide. Wagon wheels, hooves and a century of work leave them worn smooth and slightly hollow in the middle of the floor.
| Grade | Face | Allowed defects | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Floor Select | Even wear, tight grain, original patina | Square nail holes, small checks, no rot | Finished floors, tabletops, stair treads |
| Floor Common | Heavier wear, some staining | Larger checks, filled knots, minor edge loss | Wainscot, shelving, barn-door stock |
| Shop | Mixed | Splits, sound end rot cut back | Re-sawn for trim and small pieces |
Every plank goes through the same steps. We run a metal detector over both faces and pull every nail, then kiln-sterilize the whole lot. Old barn wood can carry powderpost beetles, and heating the core of each board to at least 56 °C (133 °F) for 30 minutes kills every life stage. We check moisture after the kiln and only ship boards that read in the range of an indoor floor.
Hand-hewn beams
Before sawmills were common in the countryside, frame timbers were squared with axes. A framer scored the log with a felling axe, split off the waste between the scores, and then flattened the face with a broadaxe. The marks are still there: the shallow curved cuts of the broadaxe and, sometimes, the deeper notches of the scoring.
Most of our hewn timbers are white oak. Some are American chestnut, which was a common barn timber before the chestnut blight in the early 1900s killed most of the trees. We also get hemlock and white pine.
Here is the honest part. A beam that held up a barn for 140 years is not automatically fit to hold up your roof. Old timbers have mortises and peg holes in places your design will not need, and some have hidden decay at the joints. So we sort hewn timbers into two groups:
- Structural candidates are sound, straight-grained and free of rot. Before one goes into a load-bearing role, a certified lumber grader inspects it and stamps it, and the engineer designs around the grade and the existing holes.
- Architectural pieces are mantels, false beams, accents and anything that only carries its own weight. They still get cleaned, sterilized and checked, but not graded for strength.
Barn siding
Pennsylvania barn siding is mostly white pine and hemlock, 1 in. thick and 8 in. to 14 in. wide. We sell two looks. Red-painted boards still carry the iron-oxide paint (often a mix that included linseed oil) that Lancaster barns are known for. Grey boards were never painted, or lost their paint long ago, and have weathered to silver.
We sort siding by face (red, grey or mixed), by width, and by length. We leave the nail holes and saw marks, because that is what people are buying. We do not power-wash it, because that strips the patina in an afternoon that took a century to build.
Hand-forged hardware
Old barns came with iron: strap hinges on the big doors, pintles they swung on, and here and there a strap where a joint had loosened. Our smith forges new hardware the same way, hot at the anvil, so the pieces match the frames they go on.
| Piece | Typical stock | Finish | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strap hinge | 1/4 × 2 in. flat bar, 18–36 in. | Linseed & beeswax or galvanized | Barn doors, gates, studio doors |
| Pintle | 3/4 in. pin, lag or through-bolt | Galvanized | Carries the strap hinge |
| King-post stirrup | 3/8 × 3 in. strap | Hot-dip galvanized | Hangs the tie beam from the king post |
| Timber plate | 3/8 in. plate, sized to timber | Galvanized or black oxide | Repairs, scarf backers, heel joints |
| Heel strap | 3/8 × 3 in. strap, bent to pitch | Hot-dip galvanized | Ties rafter foot to tie beam |
Real wrought iron is hard to find today, so our hardware is forged from mild steel. It looks the same once it has been worked and finished. Anything carrying a structural load, such as stirrups, heel straps and plates, is drawn by our engineer and forged to that drawing. Bolt holes are punched hot or drilled to the specified size, never torched.
For outdoor work we recommend hot-dip galvanizing. Linseed and beeswax looks wonderful inside but needs a fresh coat every few years outdoors.
Ordering salvage
Inventory changes every week. The current list is in the yard inventory table on the catalog page. If you need a specific size for a frame, tell us the section and length. Sometimes the right beam is still standing in a barn we have not taken down yet.