SHOP TOUR:

The first thing you learn at Sylvan Brandt, a reclaimed wood specialist in Lititz, Pennsylvania, is that the sawmill never touches new wood. “We call that ‘tree’ wood,” says Dean Brandt, the proprietor and son of the namesake founder. “We don’t use it.”

Sylvan Brandt mills only antique wood reclaimed from old barns, sheds, and other demolished buildings for its unique flooring, beams, and such elements as fireplace mantels. One recent winter day on the shop floor, Brandt and his assistant, Richard Walton, were remilling a lot of salvaged oak for tongue-andgroove The machine flooring both using planes a moulder. the wood and neatly cuts the tongues and grooves at a single pass. Walton selects a piece of lumber and carefully feeds it into the machine. Although you can peek at the operation through a window in the closed hood, all of the magic happens out of sight: at one point the sides of the board are square, and within a span of 18"—after passing through a series of cutting heads—they’re tongued Part of and the grooved. family business since childhood, Dean Brandt has added a few twists over the years. One trick is the slight, downward lip on the bottom of the groove on his t & g flooring. “You always put the tongue down first, so the next board has trouble getting over the lip. I put a bevel on the bottom of the groove so it slides in easily. Flooring people love it.” Much of the stock used for milling floors begins with old barn beams, some as large as 12” x 14” and up to 16'

long. Before milling, the lumber must be inspected for nails and other metal, all of which must be pulled out by hand before the lumber meets the planer. Every scrap of wood that can’t be sold is salvaged and sent to a greenhouse where it’s ground up and used as heating fuel. Sawdust is sent to local farmers as bedding for milk cows. Brandt’s father, Sylvan, got into the reclaimed lumber business almost by accident. “He saw an ad for an old stone house, free if you moved it,” says Dean, who was a baby at the time. The elder Brandt and a friend dismantled and sold just about every stone and stick in that house, making so much money that Brandt soon quit his $67 a week job in an asbestos plant and went into the reclamation business. That was 1960. Sylvan Brandt ultimately built its success by remilling antique wood into beautiful flooring, the likes of which went into the homes of many well-known Main Line Philadelphia families. Unlike many flooring manufacturers, Sylvan Brandt does not prefinish or stain the wood it mills. It’s meant to be sanded and finished on site the old-fashioned way—usually with three coats of oil-based urethane. On Brandt’s rustic oak flooring, the original saw marks are left in place, and some will survive that process. “When it’s sanded and finished, it looks beautiful,” Dean says. “The finish brings it all together.”

LEFT Dean Brandt has worked on the shop floor at Sylvan Brandt since he was a boy. ABOVE Robert Walton carefully observes the progress of the hydraulic saw as it slices a floorboard from a 14" x 12" antique barn beam.

LEFT Brandt and associate Robert Walton examine a floorboard before shipment. RIGHT (top to bottom) Robert Walton feeds a board into the moulder. “It takes three-quarters of an inch to make a tongue-and-groove cut,” Brandt says. “So if we want a 4" board, we have to run the edge at 4 ¾ ".” • Tongue-and-groove flooring emerges from the moulder, ready to be stacking and bundled. • Boards at Sylvan Brandt are milled with a slight bevel on the bottom of the groove to make it easier to slide the next tongued board in place.