MATERIALS · APRIL 2026

# Why we build with salvaged hardwoods

Most of the trees that come down in Michigan were never meant to be lumber. Some of the best of them should be.

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5 MIN READ

Trees come down in towns every year: to age, to storms, to disease, to a new addition or a widened road. In Ann Arbor alone, more than six hundred fall or are removed annually. Most of them become mulch, firewood, or landfill.

## The ash years

Michigan learned what that waste looks like the hard way. The emerald ash borer, a beetle native to eastern Asia, was first found in North America in 2002, in Detroit. Within a few years it had killed millions of ash trees across southeast Michigan alone.

In 2005 Recycle Ann Arbor and the Southeast Michigan Resource Conservation and Development Council started the Urbanwood Project to send some of those trees to sawmills rather than chippers. It grew into a network of small, family-owned mills that still work with trees lost to age, disease, and storm damage, and it was among the first efforts anywhere to treat city trees as a timber supply rather than a disposal problem.

## What salvaged means to us

Salvaged does not mean second-rate. It means a tree that came down for a reason other than lumber: a walnut lost to a storm, a cherry cleared for a building, a maple at the end of its life. We would rather find a tree that is already coming down than fell one for a table, and we fill the gaps with responsibly sourced stock when a piece needs a species or a size that salvage cannot provide.

## Better wood, not just better intentions

A tree that grew in a yard or along a street grew differently from one in a managed stand. With room to spread, it builds wide crowns, heavy limbs, and irregular trunks, and that is where figure comes from. Crotch grain, curl, a live edge with real movement in it, a board wide enough to make a tabletop from a single slab: these come from trees that were never grown to be cut.

It is harder wood to work. Urban logs hide nails, fence wire, and old hardware, and a single strike can ruin a blade. Sizes are unpredictable, and every log has to be read on its own terms. We think that is the point.

SABLE · CONVERGENCE, A LIVE EDGE WALNUT TOP · WALNUT GRAIN, HEARTWOOD AND SAPWOOD

## Dried slowly, kept in sequence

Freshly sawn wood is heavy with water, and most of it has to go before the wood can be built into anything that will last. We dry slowly. The old rule of thumb is a year of air-drying for every inch of thickness, and thick slabs cannot be rushed without checking and warping.

While it dries, the wood is stacked in sequence, each board kept in the order it came off the log. When a table is ordered we lay the whole flitch out on the shop floor and read it before a single cut is made, so the figure carries across a joint instead of stopping at it.

Every board, understood before it is touched.

## Carbon, kept

A growing tree draws carbon from the air and stores it in its wood. When a fallen tree is chipped or burned, much of that carbon returns to the atmosphere. Built into a table a family keeps for generations, it stays put.

That is the simplest argument for salvaged hardwood, and the one we keep coming back to: the most sustainable piece of furniture is the one that never needs replacing. Starting with a tree that was already down only makes the case stronger.

[EXPLORE SABLE, OUR WALNUT COLLECTION](https://rohnstudio.com/collections/sable/)

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

[Urbanwood RECYCLE ANN ARBOR](https://www.recycleannarbor.org/divisions/reuse-center/urbanwood)
[Emerald Ash Borer TEXAS A&M FOREST SERVICE](https://tfsweb.tamu.edu/trees/invasive-species/invasive-insects/emerald-ash-borer/)
[Skip the woodchipper: Salvaged city trees are the new lumber CASCADE PBS](https://www.cascadepbs.org/environment/2022/12/skip-woodchipper-salvaged-city-trees-are-new-lumber/)
[Urban Ashes Redirects Wood Waste NEXTCYCLE MICHIGAN](https://nextcyclemichigan.com/stories/urban-ashes-redirects-wood-waste)

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Published 2026-04 · Materials · https://rohnstudio.com/blog/salvaged-hardwoods/