–SOLD–

This is a just a really, really nice piece of white oak. Most old beams are cut square — like a 8×8, but this mantel shelf beam has original 4×7 proportions. The top has quarter sawing as well as lots of little checks and little character marks. The front face has some flowing check marks, the hint of an old branch and some circle saw marks. The bottom is pleasantly clean with some more flowing checks. This mantel shelf could probably be flipped top-to-bottom so that more character is seen on the bottom side. Overall, this piece has a very nice warm saddle brown hue.

The wood for this beam came from an old barn near Green Isle, Minnesota. We think, but have not confirmed, that this is an old Pinske Barn. We know Pete Pinske, who was a 3rd generation barn builder. His grandfather started building barns in the late 1800s. The Pinske’s were early pioneers of doing hip-roof barns. The hip-roof allowed the farmer to store more hay in the building. Pinske’s were probably building the hip roof barns 20 years before they were popular. The Pinske’s were also very good about selecting trees for lumber in the winter time. This gave them an advantage to build more barns in the summer time with better lumber. Pete recently helped build a house for his grand-nephew where they reclaimed wood from one of the original barns that Pete’s grandfather built. They used old material for cabinets and other decor. So the wood ended up traveling 5 generations. A nice article about Karl Pinske’s house can be found on-line.

Note, this white oak is 100% natural color. There is a finish coat of a penetrating oil – Rubio Monocoat, but there is not any stain applied. This natural color change very pronounced in white oak in particular.

This one is just so nice, we are not offering any discounting on it. We are happy resize it at no charge.