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Czech Pine?

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Czech Pine?

8/21/06, 9:46 PM #1

David Miller
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Czech Pine?

David Miller from Iowa

>Parents are "downsizing" and I ended up with a behemoth immigrant chest that, according to legend, was built in Czechloslovakia and came over with the great grandparents. Clear pine boards 1 1/4" thick and about 16 inches wide. Great grandpop's dovetails are about as good as mine - which probably explains why he became a stone mason and not a carpenter.

Question is - the wood looks just like white pine out of Michigan/Wisconsin. Was big clear pine common in the motherland in the 1870s?

Thanks, David

Re: Czech Pine?

8/22/06, 5:23 PM #2

George Makowski
Guest

Re: Czech Pine?

George Makowski

>Dave, It depends where in "Czechoslvakia" they were from. Most of the lowland areas would have been logged over many times by the mid XIX c. and would not be likely to produce the boards you mention.

The northern edge of the Czech and Slovak republics, however, includes a northern hook of the Carpathian range which remained quite wild and inaccessible in that time, and into the XX c. Coniferous forests were common there. Local river transport was sometimes by hollowed out logs bound together into rafts. That, of course, presumes large logs and lots of them, big enough to make the boards you describe.

So, if your family is Slovak, or Polish Goral, or Ukrainian Huzul or Lemko, less likely Czech, the chest may be from the homeland.

Hope that helps,

George in AL