Dave Hinz wrote:

On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:15:19 -0400, Lee Michaels wrote:
"Dave Hinz" wrote in message
...

In the basement of the main house at this farm, is an oak beam that has
been dendochronologically dated to the 10th century, and the notches
show that it was used in a structure previous to the current one which
dates to the 1300s. Even 700 years ago people were re-using timbers.


I may be a historical heretic here, but I just have to wonder.
How much would that beam fetch on e-bay?

Well, given that you'd have to disassemble a house to get at it, it's
probably not negotiable.

Yes, actually I suspect they were far more prone to reuse things then
than now since every beam had to be hand sawn and hewn. It wasn't so
easy to go get something from the sawmill...

And how easy would it be to work with hand or power tools?

It's like knocking on a piece of solid iron. I would imagine the grain
is very tight, but couldn't see any.

How well would it finish?

It has a loverly nearly black, but visible grain and figure look. Easy
to replicate if you have 1000 years to do it, I suppose.

Any idea what species it is? I would expect that it would be hard but
would probably work like a dream underneath the exterior...

It's amazing that here, a house that's 150 years old is notable. There,
there are buildings that sat _empty_ for that long that have been put
back into use. After the black plague of (1660s some time), many of the
farms sat empty for a century or more - if you ever meet someone with
the last name of "Odegard", then at some point their ancestors took over
one of those farms whose name had been forgotten, so they were re-named
"old farm".

I recall last time I was in Rochester, Kent, England that the "new"
touristy attraction was Dickens and the "new" castle was roughly 1100 as
opposed to the "old" castle ruins from which it was built. And, there
are places where the first Roman wall are still visible dating from
roughly AD70 or so, if I recall correctly.


Next time I'm over there, I'll take some pictures of the woodwork and
paintings if the owners are OK with it. The site has been in use for a
_long_ time - they even have a stone axe that was found on-site...well,
the head, the handle is gone but was made of wood.

That would be fabulous...