Dedicated to starting the first comprehensive recovery effort in the State of Florida

Viable Lumber is a tree recovery and recycling cooperative on a mission to establish the first comprehensive, organized harvesting of urban timber in the Tampa Bay area. The resulting lumber will be "Green certified". The tree recovery program will be modeled on other successful operations in other states and adapted to local conditions and markets. If successful here in Tampa Bay, it could be rolled out to the whole State. 

Currently we intercept logs from trees that have been cut down and destined to become mulch, burned for fuel or just buried in landfills.  The cut tree logs will be milled for lumber using a Woodmizer portable sawmill that can take logs up to 30" in diameter. Certain larger trunks will be accepted. Some specialty logs will be sold whole to buyers. We currently now have about 30 tons of logs to mill.

The lumber is cut to various sizes, end sealed and air dried. Later we will be using solar kilns to dry the wood. Viable Lumber will donate, sell, trade and auction off the resulting lumber. 

Participating local wood clubs and guilds will get lumber at discount prices and a percentage of the sales will be donated to that club. Some tropical hardwoods we harvest locally will be shipped to wood clubs in the North and West where they rarely get these woods. Woodturners love to use fresh cut wood. So far we have recovered  red cedar, monkeypod, sweet gum, indian rosewood, bishop wood, camphor, eucalyptus, norfolk pine, golden flamboyant, red oak and live oak. Another 20+ species are planned to be in inventory- especially after a hurricane. 

We will be providing a website to alert intarsia artists, sculptors, carvers, turners, furniture makers, wood workers, builders and designers about trees coming into the system as they are cut and retrieved.  Depending on your needs and preferences we can alert you by e-mail about the species, size, description, quality and expected quantity and price. We will also be providing pictures of any specialty lumber or rarer species. Eventually we will also be showcasing on an online gallery the items made from the recovered lumber. We will likely be most active during hurricane season.

If you know of someone cutting down a hardwood tree or planning to, please contact us or have your arborist call us if the tree will not be recovered and used for lumber. We'd like to give these trees a new life of beauty and usefulness. Call Pete at 727-643-2807 or e-mail

viablelumber@yahoo.com   or   lumberjeff66@yahoo.com

Giving "Save a tree" a whole new meaning!