Submerged Sitka

[Michael McMillan]

Does anyone have any experience with Salvaged Sitka logs from a fresh water ? i found a log has been submerged for ~ 80+ years in a river and thought I'd fish for pearls of wisdom here. Thank you - Michael McMillan

[Charlie Schultz]

Hi Michael & welcome to the forum. Please note that we require your user/login name to be your real first & last name. Please PM me or one of the mods and we can update your info.

As for the question, I know the guys at Alaska Tonewoods salvage a lot of their spruce, not sure if it is submerged or not though. Hopefully someone with some direct experience will be along soon.

[Michael Lewis]

Good wood is good wood. You might find some good salvaged wood, it depends on the qualities of the wood. There has been a lot of smoke surrounding the salvaged sinker logs especially for instruments, but not all (much) of it is suitable. Test the tap tone, bending strength, workability, etc. to tell if your wood is good.

Personally, I prefer normal air dried wood as I have not found any better.

[Art Davila]

As I recall from another forum.
The hype was not that in was submerged that made the wood any better, only that it was possible to get wood from trees much older than that which is currently milled today.
So if the log was cut 100 plus years ago the tree might be of a quality not available today as all the older trees where cut so long ago only "young" trees are cut today.

I don't know if these claims have "tone" merit,
but getting wide board like 30 inches wide is very hard to find and not cheap.
But what guitar is 30 inches wide.
As a table tops I could understand the desire for on single board that wide but I don't see the advantage in guitars. Maybe cellos and basses?

[Simon Magennis]

I recall reading a post somewhere about "harvesting" sunken logs. Apparently it is quite regulated in various areas of the US. So the fact that the O.P. "found" a log does not mean that he/she will be allowed to harvest it.