Timber & Care

Everything that leaves this shop is solid timber, mostly grown in Britain, and solid timber is alive in the sense that matters: it takes up moisture through a wet autumn and gives it back over a dry winter with the heating on. Sound design allows for that. This page sets out what to expect and what to do about it.

Jump to: The timbers used · Movement and what is normal · Day-to-day care · Marks, rings and repairs · Where the boards come from

The timbers used

Six do nearly all the work. Something else is used where there is a reason for it. A tropical hardwood that cannot be traced to a named forest is not, and nothing at all is veneered onto board.

English oak

Oak

The default, and the most forgiving. Hard, stable once dry, and it darkens gently to a warm brown over about five years. Pippy and burr boards cost more and earn it on a table top. Reacts with iron and damp: wet steel wool leaves a black stain that will not wash out.

English walnut

Walnut

The best-looking timber to be had in this country and the hardest to buy in width. Home-grown walnut is browner and more varied than the imported kind. It fades rather than darkens, so a south window is the wrong place for it.

Ash

Pale, springy and very strong in thin sections, which makes it right for chairs, bench legs and anything that will take a shove. Plentiful at present for a sad reason, as dieback works through the hedgerows.

Wych elm

Elm

Wild, interlocked grain that will not split along a line and tears out if a plane is rushed through it. It arrives in ones and twos from garden trees, so an elm piece is a one-off and cannot be repeated later.

Cherry

Starts a pinkish straw colour and goes a deep reddish brown inside two years, faster in the light. That change is the point of it. A placemat left in one spot through the first summer prints its outline into the top.

Sycamore

Nearly white, fine and even: the timber reached for under paint, or as a drawer lining. Rippled boards turn up occasionally and are saved for door panels. It marks easily, so it belongs inside a cupboard rather more often than on top of one.

Movement, and what counts as a fault

A 900 mm wide oak top can change width by four or five millimetres between a damp October and a dry February with the heating on. That is not a defect, and no maker can prevent it. What a maker can do is build so the movement has somewhere to go. Tops from this shop are fixed with buttons or slotted plates that let the width travel while the fixing stays tight. Panels float in their frames. Breadboard ends, where they are used, are pegged through slotted holes.

Normal, then:

A hairline gap opening at a breadboard end in winter and closing in summer
A drawer that runs sweetly in January and wants a firmer push in August
A door sitting a fraction proud of its neighbour for part of the year
Colour changing over the first two years, unevenly at first

Not normal, and worth a telephone call:

A joint that has opened and stayed open through a full change of season
A split running across the grain, or one that goes right through a top
A finish that has gone cloudy, sticky or flaked
Anything that rocks on a floor known to be flat

Rules of thumb

Indoor RH: Aim for 40–60%
Not against: A radiator or a wood stove
Not under: Direct all-day sun
First fortnight: Let it settle before judging a drawer
New build: Plaster dries for months — expect more movement in year one

A cheap hygrometer in the room settles more arguments than any amount of worrying.

Day-to-day care

Three finishes leave the arch and they want different things. Where the finish has been forgotten, the piece name is enough to find the job in the book; the telephone number is at the foot of this page.

Hard wax oil

Most tables and benches. Wipe with a damp cloth and dry it off. Nothing containing silicone, nothing sold as a polish spray, and no neat washing-up liquid.

Re-oil the top once a year, or whenever water stops beading: a thin coat on a lint-free cloth, left twenty minutes, then wiped off hard so nothing stays wet on the surface. One small tin does a table three times over.

Heat is the enemy here, not water. A mat under anything straight off the hob.

Shellac and wax

Sideboards, dressers, and anything that will not be eaten off. Dust with a dry cloth. Wax twice a year with a hard paste wax, sparingly, buffed off after ten minutes.

Shellac dislikes alcohol and standing water. A spilled glass of wine mopped up at once is nothing; the same glass left overnight leaves a ring that has to be re-bodied.

Silicone spray, never. It contaminates the surface, and any later repair has to strip it first.

Painted eggshell

Fitted cupboards and some carcase work. Warm water, a little mild soap, a soft cloth. No cream cleaners, no abrasive pads, nothing containing bleach.

Hand-brushed eggshell goes on hardening for about three weeks after delivery, so it wants gentle treatment at first: no tape on the fronts, nothing heavy sliding about inside.

A labelled jar of the exact paint goes out with every painted job, against the inevitable knock.

Marks, rings and repairs

Furniture in use gets marked, and a table still looking showroom-new after five years has probably had nobody sitting round it. Most of what causes alarm is fixable at home:

White ring: Moisture trapped in the finish. On oil, re-oil the area. On wax, rub through the wax with a cloth and apply fresh. If it survives that, it is in the shellac and wants the workshop.
Dent, no fibres cut: A damp cloth and a warm iron held on it for a few seconds swells most dents back up on oiled work. Re-oil afterwards.
Scratch in oil: Very fine abrasive along the grain, then a local coat of oil. It blends within a month.
Black iron stain on oak: Oxalic acid, carefully, then a re-finish. Worth a telephone call first.
Loose joint: Stop using the piece and ring. A fortnight of wobbling a loose tenon turns a half-hour repair into a new rail.

Bigger repairs come back to the arch. They start at £160, and a piece that is not worth the money is said to be not worth the money before any work begins — including pieces made elsewhere, which make up much of the repair book. Rates sit on the commissions page.

Ten-year guarantee

Every commissioned piece is guaranteed ten years against failure of a joint or a finish in normal indoor use. The guarantee follows the piece rather than the buyer: sold or inherited, it still stands.

Seasonal movement, dents, marks from use and colour change fall outside it, being the timber behaving as it should.

Keep the delivery note. The piece name and the finish are on it, and that is all the book needs to find the job.

Where the boards come from

Three merchants do most of it: a yard near Frome for air-dried oak and ash, a kiln in the Forest of Dean for cherry and sycamore, and a small sawyer near Chew Magna who telephones when a garden tree has come down. That last route accounts for the elm and most of the walnut, which is why a piece in either is a one-off.

Timber is bought by the board rather than the pack, and picked in person: a morning in a cold yard with a tape and a stick of chalk. Boards then stand in the arch for two or three weeks, coming to terms with the room, before anything is cut to final size.

Everything is UK-grown or, rarely, European and certified. A brief that genuinely needs something else will be told so and priced accordingly, which has happened twice in seven years.

Sycamore, fresh sawn