# Underwater log salvage?



## djnbig

I was speaking with a friend of mine the other day about this and he mentioned it's a relatively untouched industry especially in parts of northern Canada where hard to access lakes and rivers contain hundreds of thousands of fallen timber that managed to escape booms and barges. The only real accounts I can find of active salvage operators are working on large bodies like the great lakes. The many thousands of deep lakes in northern Canada sure makes me wonder of the possibilities. 

Anyone else care to discuss?

djn


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## Husky137

djnbig said:


> hard to access lakes and rivers



I think this really covers all the bases. I can't imagine it being terribly profitable to engage in an expensive recovery operation when the cost of conventional logging is having difficulty covering costs in a depressed log market.


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## Zackman1801

it actually is very profitable because they sell the wood in special markets because of the coloration. i guess people want that to make furniture because of what it looks like. Here in maine there are small outfits doing it.


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## woodguy105

I saw a special on salvaging logs from fresh water lakes...not sure where but BIG dollars. The wood they were pulling up had beautiful tight tight grain and unique qualities. Old growth I guess.


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## Dave Hadden

Here's a link to some info on the "Sawfish."
Underwater log salvage has been happening in BC for some time now.
Lake Cowichan, Ootsa Lake, Pitt Lake and others I can't recall off the top of my head have all been the sites of such activity.

http://www.tritonlogging.com/engineering.html

Check around and you'll find lots of info, and it's the niche market that makes it economically viable. Japanese mostly I believe.
Not viable when the lakes are frozen up though, so that's a big drawback.

Take care.


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## Barnie

I pulled some logs out of a lake by my cottage and cut it into 2'' lumber , it was good till it dried out then it split up along each grain like there was no resin in it to hold it together or something plus it really stinks when you saw it up. oh ya it's really HEAVY also.


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## Backwoods

I have milled some of those lost bottom logs, not all are old growth, in fact very few were. The old growth logs have some value to them, the rest just stink and have low recovery rates due to the high percentage of drying defects. 

Are they worth going after? 
It all depends on the cost of recovering them, the percentage of finished quality wood verse cost, and your market.


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## TimberMcPherson

Its popular here to retrieve old wood, some that fell up to 50,000 years ago from swamps. They call it swamp kauri (kauri is the tree). Can be a good earner if you have the right swamp and a big digger.
http://www.ancientkauri.co.nz/index.php/extract_raw_logs


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## saw mutt

Seems I heard something about this being done in South American with some of the tree species that are rare it can bring quite a bit of cash from the woodworking niche.


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## woodbooga

There was some interest in this in the White Mountain's of NH some time back. Some of the logs were HUGE American chestnut that was felled prior to the blight.


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## papossefan

I attended college at the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport PA, Williamsport borders the susquahanna river and was once a huge logging town. One of the forestry professors at the college used to have a boat that he had specially outfitted to retrieve logs from the river bottom. He got some pretty big money for a lot of the logs, there was a lot of chestnut burried in the river bottom that was preserved for almost a century by the pressure of the water. For some reason which I do not know, no one is allowed to fish logs out of the river anymore though.


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## pennj

Hey guys.
I live on a barge, on a lake in central southern B.C. We have been engaged in underwater logging for the last 15 years. We are actually pulling a bundle out tomorrow. Check this out. http://www.underwaterlogging-ltd.com/index.html


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## slowp

I should hope you can't log underwater around here. Various govt. agencies spend big dollars helicoptering logs into the rivers. Oh, they also truck them and use a shovel to dump them in.


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## buzz sawyer

TimberMcPherson said:


> Its popular here to retrieve old wood, some that fell up to 50,000 years ago from swamps. They call it swamp kauri (kauri is the tree). Can be a good earner if you have the right swamp and a big digger.
> http://www.ancientkauri.co.nz/index.php/extract_raw_logs



Yeah.. but man...you're depleting a future petrified old growth forest!


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## 2dogs

slowp said:


> I should hope you can't log underwater around here. Various govt. agencies spend big dollars helicoptering logs into the rivers. Oh, they also truck them and use a shovel to dump them in.



What she said. Around here you can't touch any "large woody debris" in a waterway. It is fish habitat. Get last years Axmen and watch the Aqua Logger circus. Then look up here and see what happened to him.


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## cjnspecial

Logging sinker cypress logs is a pretty profitable niche industry down here. It's about the only way to get old growth cypress and a lot of people want it.


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## hammerlogging

I knew a guy that built a pontoon for salvaging sinkers back in Little River area in NorCal- it was welded 55 gal. drums for pontoons with an arch over the top and a winch, one old growth log at a time he get from upriver and would deck them at the mouth of the river on the beach. Considering back in the day they could take schooners nine miles up river and now you can barely get a canoe upriver thats a lot of sediment to cover old growth logs. They used to blow up temporary dams in the spring and send the logs to the coast, losing some.

He was shut down because nobody had figured out the env. or ownership laws. Funny thing is it was really just a cover for his upstream farming operations......

I brought some American Chetnut scraps home the other day and am working on a little piece from slivers I "milled" out with a table saw. BUT, there's a whole log (about 50")down there on the side of the mountain, I keep reminding my boss to send the jammer back to that perch and yank her out to see if theres anything in it- I bet you could get at least 20% recovery with a lucas type mill. We pulled a oak burl out that was 5'x6' the other day. Just for fun.....another piece to sit at the log yard, maybe I'll slab it out one day.


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## 2dogs

hammerlogging said:


> I knew a guy that built a pontoon for salvaging sinkers back in Little River area in NorCal- it was welded 55 gal. drums for pontoons with an arch over the top and a winch, one old growth log at a time he get from upriver and would deck them at the mouth of the river on the beach. Considering back in the day they could take schooners nine miles up river and now you can barely get a canoe upriver thats a lot of sediment to cover old growth logs. They used to blow up temporary dams in the spring and send the logs to the coast, losing some.
> 
> He was shut down because nobody had figured out the env. or ownership laws. Funny thing is it was really just a cover for his upstream farming operations......
> 
> I brought some American Chetnut scraps home the other day and am working on a little piece from slivers I "milled" out with a table saw. BUT, there's a whole log (about 50")down there on the side of the mountain, I keep reminding my boss to send the jammer back to that perch and yank her out to see if theres anything in it- I bet you could get at least 20% recovery with a lucas type mill. We pulled a oak burl out that was 5'x6' the other day. Just for fun.....another piece to sit at the log yard, maybe I'll slab it out one day.



For a few years the rivers of Northern California produced many very valuable old growth redwood logs and stumps. The fish cops put a stop to that.


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## dubub44

woodbooga said:


> There was some interest in this in the White Mountain's of NH some time back. Some of the logs were HUGE American chestnut that was felled prior to the blight.



wow very interesting! any ideas on where to find more information about log salvage operations in NH rivers and lakes?


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