Products:

Treadlight™ Flooring

Treadlight™ Trim

Dimensional Lumber

NorthSlope Window by Clawson featuring Treadlight Larch

New! North Slope's Treadlight Color Suite

Treadlight™ Picture Frames

Why Larch or Tamarack Flooring?

Master woodworkers have known of larch or tamarack's special properties for centuries and probably many millenia.  This is the tough, rot–resistant wood from which the Vikings shaped their graceful, twinprowed long–distance sailing ships, some of which have been raised from harbor bottoms after lying in mud for 1,000 years. Siberian carpenters call the larch “The Tree of Eternity,” employing it in wooden churches built to last for centuries.  Mentioned in the writings of ancients such as Pliny, this is the tree that provided the pilings driven into the lagoon on which the city of Venice has perched since the Middle Ages.

Europeans, too, have long understood the appeal of larch as flooring, both aesthetically and practically.  Larch is known as “the hardest of the softwoods” and thus is more resistant to the denting of other softwood flooring.  Because we harvest small–diameter or “suppressed–growth” trees, Treadlight possesses exceptionally tight annual growth rings – often over 30 rings per inch.  This tight grain imparts additional hardness and durability to our Treadlight flooring.  The U.S. Forest Products Laboratory (see button) tests our flooring at a Janka rating of 886 – roughly the equivalent of American teak, walnut or black cherry. 

Aesthetically, people who know it have long appreciated the striking look of larch or tamarack flooring. Treadlight features a beautiful honey–and–cinnamon grain with dark, tight pinhole knots. It can take stains of many hues.  Elegant yet warmly rustic at the same time, Treadlight harmonizes well with both traditional and contemporary decor.

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