ATLANTIC FINE WOODS

The urban forest includes all trees, vegetation, watersheds and wildlife in our community. Tree-lined roadways, open green spaces, undeveloped forests, parks and private and commercial lands are all part of the urban forest!  When trees from these areas die, they are cut down and sent to the landfill.  Instead, by saving and recycling the best logs, Atlantic Fine Woods is able to offer a wide variety of unique slabs of local wood species.

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Materials tell a story, and Urban Harvested wood has a long history to convey for every individual tree. This is seen in how it is processed; urban wood is collected in small quantities, and cut to appropriate sizes. The logs are scanned for defects, like chain link fence, rocks or any manner of oddity that has found itself attached to a tree and then the tree has grown around it.  That is why we work in small batches where the character and unique quality of the wood can be carefully brought to its full potential.  The defects in the wood - dynamic live edges, knots, cracks and voids - are what brings it character and beauty, and we try to maximize the potential of each log we mill.  

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Conserving and protecting our world’s forested areas is extremely important to us. When forestry is done in a sustainable manner, it can be an important resource of regional socioeconomic development. To ensure this we exclusively work with local arborists and only get logs that were not cut for their timber value. Our Urban Harvested wood products give new life to city trees that had to come down.
 

The process of milling urban trees is much more labor-intensive and time-consuming than what you find in the traditional forest products process. The processes are similar to the difference between handmade artisan work and what happens on a large-scale, industrial assembly line. Urban trees are collected in small quantities, cut to appropriate sizes, scanned for metal or other defects, and processed in small batches where the character and unique quality of the wood can be carefully brought to its full potential.  We believe the defects in the wood -dynamic live edges, knots, cracks and voids- are what brings it character and beauty, and we try to maximize the potential of each log we mill.​

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When urban trees die, it can be difficult and expensive to collect single logs from many different areas. This is why most of the wood we recycle comes from private tree service companies. These groups help perform an intermediary step to collect all of the wood into one place. Despite this help with collection, this is still much more difficult than what traditional log buyers face. The good logs still have to be sorted out from the other types of wood waste, cut to size, and inspected for metal and defects. This is yet one more extra step that we must take to reclaim this wood.

 

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Unfortunately, we do not offer free tree removals in exchange for the wood and rarely purchase logs. These are common questions, but ones with a more complicated and difficult answer than you might expect. Every job requires experts with very different skills, you will want to hire a certified arborist to handle your tree removal. We do have some that work directly with AFW. Or, if you would prefer to choose another arborist, you can still request that they drop the wood off at our Decatur facility for milling.

 

We hope to soon find more efficient ways to recycle every good quality tree, including those from individual homeowners, but this is still a challenge. For now, you can see that your trees are recycled by contacting us to see if your tree is a candidate.  Then have the logs cut to millable length (anything between 4 to 18 feet long) and brought to our milling facility.

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