O, the weather this week’s been frightful, but the Cedar is delightful.
Since it’s been air drying for years , let it kiln, let it kiln, let it kiln…
We’re feeling jolly, can you tell?
Well, it’s been murky old January week here at Cocking Sawmills so by all accounts we should be down in the dumps. But no, not us! Instead we’ve been unloading and reloading the big kiln with Cedar.
Which is exactly the sort of thing that puts a smile on our faces.
Here you see before you a hand built wall of English Cedar of Lebanon and it was designed and specified by the clever people at TOAST.
They’re a soulful company who sell beautiful clothing and homeware, championing natural materials ( like our Cedar of Lebanon) and artisan works, handmade items and small production runs.
TOAST are renowned for bringing soul to the high street and we’re thrilled that they chose some of our locally grown Cedar of Lebanon for a shop interior project on the Kings Road.
Cedar of Lebanon, light to medium brown heart with strong scent. Medium fine, straight grain but can be knotty. Durable timber, medium miusture movement and low strength. can be difficult to machine, bark pockets can be troublesome. Can be painted and varnished well. glue, oil and polish are ok but high resin content prevents most treatments.
This timber has a unique perfume, grows to incredible dimensions & is a sought after by furniture makers for wardrobes & chests of drawers because the scent keeps cloth eating moths and insects at bay.
Rich red brown heartwood, pinky when fresh sawn, pales as it dries but an exterior finish will maintain colouring once surface is dry. Although difficult to treat due to Tannin content WRC is naturally durable, weathers well and silvers down over time.
Softwood
Popular with architects and designers, WRC is not a heavy duty timber but is great for garden structures, furniture, fencing, decking and gates.
Got the wrong Cedar? Try Cedar of Lebanon, the big wood with the big perfume!
Prices for air & kiln dried boards, waney edge &square edge, in Ash, Beech, Cherry, Chestnut, Cedar of Lebanon, Elm, Maple, Sycamore, Walnut, Southern Yellow Pine, Sapele, Wenge, Tulipwood, Western Red Cedar,
…not an instrument of torture but a playground for woodfans.
The Cocking Sawmills Timber Rack has been around forever (or at least 4 years!). Recently it’s taken on a life of it’s own, a sort of woodyard within a woodyard. In response to crowds of woodfans vying for elbow room in the overly stocked, single bay of racking… we’ve had a makeover. And not just any makeover. A proper makeover, with real thought and planning and everything!
This week Tom took a trip up to Helmdon Sawmill to select our next batch of English logs for milling.
As usual he’s keeping us well stocked with large dimension Cedar of Lebanon logs to make boules of 20mm and 27mm waney edge for furniture making and interior cladding. There are no Tineola bisselliella on us…!
Next on the list is the sought after yet hard to come by English Walnut he’s been keeping for best.
He’s decided it’s time to commit so he’s putting it on the bandsaw but Tom says we’ll have to wait until we’re sticking it to find out what thickness it is. We all piped up with different suggestions based on wants and needs for different customers – not very helpful – but as Tom only has the two logs to mill this time we’re going to have see who gets their way… but perhaps it’ll be mixed thickness?! That would be clever…
After Walnut we get a nice big parcel of Pippy Oak from the Scottish borders. It grows beautifully up there in the cooler climes. Big straight logs with lots of good looking external burring indicating we could be in for some nice medium and perhaps a bit of heavy pip.
Tom will be watching this parcel closely… he loves to predict his pippy log outcomes. We’d all be happy if some of those logs we’re over 3m, nice, long pippy oak for kitchen joinery and table making to add to the mix for some furniture makers we know…
Our sticking team is busy in the yard putting together some gorgeous fresh sawn T&T boules, all sourced from sustainable managed British woodlands.
We’ve got air dried Oak, Elm (both pippy!) Chestnut, Ash, Cedar of Lebanon, Yew, Sycamore, Plane & Beech jumping the queue straight to the kiln & into Peter’s shed ready for use. They’re a cabinetmaker’s dream!
Our logs are carefully selected from well managed British woodlands, they are cut every autumn, winter and spring* by the best sawyer in the country (he really is!).
Then they’re sticked, measured, graded & stacked in boule for air drying in the open (for a year per inch!) until thoroughly seasoned. This is the complete log traditionally sawn ‘though & through’ (T&T) so it contains crown boards (great for wide figure) and quarter sawn boards (straight grained and stable) in the same boule.
“A stack of timber formed from a log that is sawn longitudinally by a series of successive parallel cuts with the resultant waney-edged pieces then assembled to re-create the original form of the log”
Hmm, they’re not wrong, but whilst that statement is quite true, it really doesn’t capture the romance and soul of traditional sawmilling, boule sticking and artisan wood drying associated with producing our beautiful, flat, well-seasoned, stable, unstressed boards of waney edge timber… but we’ll let them have that one anyway shall we?
Let’s see, because it’s seasoned and stored outdoors, air dried boule is appropriate to use for exterior joinery, decking, exterior furniture, cladding projects and sometimes even structural work.
After kilning the moisture content is bought down to a level good for internal use. These kiln dried boules are perfect for furniture, kitchen making, cabinet making, interior joinery & flooring. With timber it’s all about what it’s going to be used for and selecting the appropriate timber for the job.
Hopefully we’ve got that covered – Just ask us for advice!
Why use boule?
If quality and board stability are important to you, if selecting your own timber, matching grain and colour, having a wide range of available dimensions, utilising all of a board for economic use, knowing where your wood comes from, having stock on hand, supporting the British Forestry & Timber Industry, knowing that your work is unique…
we could go on!
But if all these things are important to you, then boule may be the right source of timber for you and your next project.
What are ‘provenance’ & ‘certification’?
Our stocklist holds data about our timber. We have worked hard to record all the information we think will be useful.
We hold chain of custody certificates so that we can source and supply FSC, PEFC timber. We also have certification for the new Grown in Britain licensing for all British Woodland owners, woods folk, sawmillers & wood users at all stages of the chain to be able to certify all well managed, homegrown timber.
Part of the reason this is possible is that we always record the source of a log, even down to the individual forest compartment it grew in. Provenance is always available to our customers and we’re working to make that information available to everyone.
And the nitty gritty?
Species: Ash, Beech, Chestnut, Cedar of Lebanon, Elm, Lime, Oak, Plane, Sycamore, Sequoia, Scots Pine, Walnut, Yew and there’s always more! Click here to see what’s in boules stock today.
Sizes: Boules are usually cut in 20mm to 120mm thicknesses and widths go up to 1000mm or more, lengths 6.2 or more. Click here to check the stock for more in depth detail.
Grades: Find out more about grades in Making the Grade, a great reference book for anyone interested in understanding grading of homegrown species. Download a copy from our website.
Prices: All our prices are on the website against the particular boule & reflecting it’s qualities.
More
Watch a little film showing Graham & Grant sticking boules – click here
Watch a little film showing the guys using the Joulin vacuum lift – click here
As always, thanks so much for watching and until next time…
From the gang at
English Woodlands Timber & Forestry
*but not summer, it’s a bit of a harsh environment (v.low humidity & lots of direct sunlight) to lay down newly sawn logs with saturated moisture content, the timber get’s put under stress, giving off moisture too fast… not our idea of quality seasoning for quality boule.
Twitter has opened up a fantastic channel for English Woodlands Timber to engage with some our customers, prospective customers, suppliers and end users.
We know that this medium does not suit everyone but I wanted to share with you some of the stories we are tweeting. The challenge we have is getting the tone right. It is essential that this is not seen as a pure selling tool but as a way of delivering valuable information to our customers…
Subscribe to the newsletter