Benches for the Brayton School

Completed Brayton School Benches

CitiLog Team Member Applying a Tung Oil Finish Onto The New Benches!

We are pleased to announce the completion of CitiLog’s first value added special project. CitiLog manufactured 11 log seating benches for The Brayton School in Summit, New Jersey. The trees had come down on their site during the summer of 2011. Instead of having them turned into firewood, mulch or dumped into a landfill, The Brayton School took a sustainable approach and had the logs upcycled into benches for the student body. All of the bark was removed by hand, sanded smooth, and finished with three layers of tung oil. This oil is an all-natural product and is non-toxic. The Brayton School is located only 12 miles from our Newark facility.

Citilog on Heritage Radio

Listen to Citilog being interviewed on the Heritage Radio Network, click here!

This week on Burning Down the House, Curtis is joined by Stubby Warmbold and Andrew Tomlinson of CitiLogs. CitiLogs is the leader in upcycled and repurposed wood and building products. Tune in to hear more about how their company turns unwanted or unused urban trees into building products through a sustainable and responsible process. Find out how they plan on reintroducing the black locust into the market learn about urban sawmills. This episode was sponsored by S. Wallace Edwards & Sons.

Citilog Donates for Earth Day

CitiLog Seating

CitiLog's completed log seating!

Citilog donated urban tree logs for seating at the Kensington CAPA High School to support the 2011 DVGBC Earth Day of Service to fix up their playground. This took place in Philadelphia, PA. Volunteers came out to show their support for Earth Day on April 30th, 2011. They were there to do some gardening work, painting, and help with the sustainability fair taking place.

Spring is Springing

Black Locust via

The early signs of spring are upon us, and we are beginning to smell the sweet fragrance of budding blossoms. If you hail from Pennsylvania down to Alabama, then it may be one budding blossom tree in particular the Robinia Pseudoacacia or more commonly know as, black locust.

The black locust is a tree that has been in our history since the beginning. As part of the Fabaceae family, it is native to the southeastern United States but grows everywhere from Pennsylvania to Alabama to Wisconsin. It favors the Appalachain chain region as well as the Ozark Plateau for the humid climate and the sandy, loamy, well-drained soils in open sunny locations. The tree itself reaches heights of anywhere from 30 to 80 feet with a diameter of about 3 to 4 feet. A young black locust has a more green bark while the older locusts have a dark, deep, and shaggy bark.

The black locust wood is extremely durable and rot-resistant, two reasons that generation after generation have utilized this special wood. Originally the black locust wood was used to make fence posts and wagon wheels. Farmers began planting small groves of the black locust trees on their farms so as to utilize the wood in the coming years. Black Locust trees grow at a rate of a quarter inch per year, so it was not long before the farmers could be using their trees.

Here at Black Locust Lumber and Citilog we use this 17th century business model in our day to day work. We find that by incorporating our natural resources and power into todays world it helps to keep with the ways of our ancestors and to keep this planet healthy and alive. You may ask yourself how do we do this at a small lumber company in New Jersey of all places? Well we use real horse power (Buck and Bill) to remove the logs from the sites and use a system called upcycling with your trees. Upcycling entails that we take your wood that would have been tossed and turned it into a finished product. We try and use as much as possible so not to create waste. Where as our ancestors were using black locust wood to create fence posts, wagon wheels, and railroad ties, we have now expanded to using it for everything from decking, seating, siding, trellises to speciality projects like garden applications and sun baffles.

That is just a brief little synopsis on the black locust wood. With Spring in the air things around the office are really starting to pick up. It is proving to be an exciting new year!

So get out there and enjoy the earths rebirth, renewal, and regrowth that is Spring. Keep your eyes open for a black locust tree, you never know where you might find one!

NEWS! CitiLog

Willem Warmbold & Stubby Warmbold of CitiLog

The CitiLog company has been featured in Timber Frames Unlimited Newsletter. Read about our company and what we're up to here!

A New Year, a New Yard...

Now that it is 2011 some of us start planning our outdoor projects for the spring and summer while we're still cooped up in the house. An ideal species for decking, patios, fences, trellis' and gardens is Black Locust. This is a locally harvested hardwood that is also rot-resistant and GREAT for outdoor applications. This FSC Certified Black Locust will last well over 50 years without significant decay. Black Locust is not pressure treated nor is it harvested in tropical regions over seas, making it a more responsible environmental choice. Contact Black Locust Lumber or go to their website www.blacklocustlumber.com for further information. All products are custom sawn to your specifications and shipped ready for installation. So get those projects drawn up and remember Black Locust as your go-to wood for outdoor applications!

Introducing CitiLog Newark

So what happens to those trees that come down in cities due to storms, construction or hazard?

We've got a solution that takes this tree "waste" and turns it into valuable product locally! After years of hard work the horizon is here and we're looking to manufacture wood products, produce renewable energy, provide permanent green collar jobs, including job training for disadvantaged youth and we're local to boot!

We're going to be collecting downed trees in the area from tree services, municipalities, utilities, Recycle America and construction and demolition jobs. We'll divert this raw material from the waste stream by hauling it to our Newark Urban Sawmill and turn that waste into finished product. These products will include commercial wood products, industrial wood products, heat and power and of course our one of a kind upcycling standard where we take your downed trees and turn them into a custom finished product. (www.citilogs.com) Our products include everything from flooring, molding, cabinetry, and custom furniture to your pallet parts, railroad ties, and tree stakes.

There are excellent social and environmental benefits to this endeavor. Socially, the Sawmill

will employ 56 men and women to stimulate local employment. A huge effort will be put into the job training for disadvantaged youth as we set out to equip young men and women in prisoner re-entry programs. This training will provide them with OSHA work safety skills, knowledge of chainsaw and mill equipment, as well as forklift and finger-jointery operating skills. The long term goal is to make our youth more marketable with their acquired skills for multiple jobs in related fields. The program will also supply each participant with a documented work history including evaluations and an opportunity to continue employment with CitiLog.

Environmentally, all material will come from the waste stream. We will not intentionally take trees down to maintain feedstock. By using these trees as product we are diverting them from contributing to the already overfilling landfills. Carbon is sequestered in all of our products by elongating the life of the tree. We strive to achieve carbon neutrality on site as we produce sustainable energy with a fiber-fueled CHP system. The site is set out to achieve LEED Platinum.

We're excited to get this ball rolling as there is a long road ahead of us! Stay tuned for updates!