by Melanie McGee Bianchi
It’s easy to picture the most majestic trees thriving untouched in the forest. Not so. Nathan Schomber of Asheville Treecyclers is quick to level that misconception.
“It’s kind of ironic, but in general the prettier wood comes from urban yards, where the trees have grown very large. Most forests have been overlogged, and the wood from those trees is not nearly as healthy.”
Schomber’s business steps in when such lofty town trees have met with storms or other natural fates. But where traditional removal services chop up these casualties and take them to the arboreal version of the glue factory—the mulch yard—Asheville Treecyclers uses a specialized hand saw to turn select felled giants into beautiful, high-grade lumber. Prized specimens include black walnuts, sugar maples and even woolly-adelgid-stressed hemlocks (the quality of the wood isn’t affected by the infestation, says Schomber).
The growing company works mainly with the area’s high-craft woodworkers, artisans who are looking for the perfect “canvas”—i.e. a slab with a spectacular grain. “If you want to make something beautiful, use wood that’s patterned with swirls or different optical illusions, like the ripples in a tiger-stripe maple. Those are the kinds of trees we go after,” says Schomber, who rhapsodizes about a recently quarried walnut blown over in one of the past summer’s intense thunderstorms.
“It had actually pulled up its own roots so that we were able to mill that section. The grain pattern was dark brown and absolutely gorgeous. It looked like marble.”
Treecycled wood has also been put to major residential and commercial use, showing up as the bar countertop of new Biltmore Estate restaurant Cedric’s Tavern. “With our equipment we are able to make thick, wide boards that are rare to find in a lumber store,” explains Schomber. “We’ve cut single tabletops from one piece of wood.”
Schomber says he and his colleagues are stockpiling and drying enough wood to open a retail venue by late fall.
“Our goal is to be the area’s number-one supplier of fine figured wood.”
