BS: Oak Furniture

Subject: BS: Oak Furniture
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 27 May 14 - 03:51 AM

I've wondered about this for some time, so maybe someone here knows the answer! I've seen loads of adverts on TV for modern style oak stuff, dining tables, chairs, chests of drawers etc. There's also a huge Oak Furniture store in Norfolk. Now I know that oak trees take decades if not hundreds of years to grow, so how can the wood be 'responsibly sourced'? Once a tree has been felled, another won't take its place for less than about a century.

Subject: RE: BS: Oak Furniture
From: GUEST
Date: 27 May 14 - 06:07 AM

Eastern Europe has many. In fact, an oak tree reaches a size useable for funriture in about 30 years, it's the huge baulks needed for the "knees" of Nelson's 74-deckers which take 100 years plus. The wood is therefore farmable, not as quickly as pine, but still plannably.
The biggest question is the table tops. I haven't looked to see if they are laminar, ply tops on more junk carcases.

Subject: RE: BS: Oak Furniture
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 27 May 14 - 06:24 AM

That's quite reassuring GUEST. The table tops I've seen look as if they're made in several lengths, like planks. I absolutely adore oak trees; they're fairly common here in Norfolk and I understand they give shelter to about eighty different species of wildlife. I'd hate to think people were clearing whole forests in E Europe just to make fancy furniture!

Subject: RE: BS: Oak Furniture
From: GUEST
Date: 27 May 14 - 06:31 AM

Many hardwoods still in use for carpentry are grown in far Eastern countries with climates that promote quicker growth than here.

There is oak and there is oak.

Subject: RE: BS: Oak Furniture
From: Bill D
Date: 27 May 14 - 10:36 AM

" climates that promote quicker growth "

Problem is, trees that grow faster don't produce the best, tight grain wood.

"There is oak and there is oak."

Subject: RE: BS: Oak Furniture
From: Stanron
Date: 27 May 14 - 02:59 PM

There is the technique of coppicing. I don't know if it's done with oak or not, but the thing is that when you cut a sapling down it doesn't kill it. If left to it's own devices it will give off shoots which will, over time, be harvestable. When you harvest it you can leave some shoots to grow for longer so they get bigger.

Subject: RE: BS: Oak Furniture
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 27 May 14 - 03:54 PM

I've heard of coppicing, but not with oak. You may be right, but a coppiced tree doesn't offer the same habitat for wildlife as a full-grown one, sadly. All our furniture (not much, as our house is very small) is pine, which I feel happier about, knowing it's sustainable. It also mellows to a nice deep tawny colour.

Subject: RE: BS: Oak Furniture
From: GUEST,Peter
Date: 27 May 14 - 03:54 PM

Coppicing doesn't produce timber of the right grade for furniture.

Furniture is ideally produced from plantation grown trees. Beech trees were planted and replanted for the furniture trade in the Chilterns. Now that this has died out the bunny huggers get upset about any management to clear parts of the monoculture.

Subject: RE: BS: Oak Furniture
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 27 May 14 - 04:04 PM

We have some old oak furniture in the house, 1890-1910 vintage,and office furniture; bookcases, desk and table that were thrown out of an office being 'modernized', made about 1940.
There used to be a lot of old oak furniture around, but collectors now own the best of it. My daughter has some highly carved English pieces, from the "Walter Scott"- inspired era, which we picked up at "antique" sales.

No modern oak pieces.

Subject: RE: BS: Oak Furniture
From: gnu
Date: 27 May 14 - 05:06 PM

I have made many pieces of furniture from Red Oak, stained with 'Golden Oak' stain. Beautiful. Sadly, trees had to die for them. I don't do it any more.

Subject: RE: BS: Oak Furniture
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 May 14 - 05:27 PM

Here in California, there are stores all over that sell cheap oak furniture. I've always thought of oak as one of the highest-quality woods for furniture, and we have some oak mission style furniture that is of terrific quality. I buy the cheap stuff for bookshelves because I have far too many books, and the cheap oak shelves seem to work very well. Can't say I like pine furniture, and cherry and birch are too expensive. I confess I haven't worried about whether the oak for my furniture (and the firewood that heats my house) is harvested by sustainable methods. There is oak growing everywhere here, and I've never seen the ugliness of clearcut oak forests like the clearcut pine and douglas fir forests I've seen in this area (mostly in Oregon, not California).

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Oak Furniture
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 27 May 14 - 05:50 PM

As in most English churches, ours has numerous pews of solid oak, with carved pew-ends. The beams and rafters are oak too of course, as is the pulpit. In Norwich Cathedral, the misericords under the monks' seats are carved from oak which is so hard the detail achieved is amazing. The wood is a very dark brown with a lovely silvery grain to it. The modern oak furniture I've glanced at in the store is a strange pale fawn colour, and I suspect it's a type of white oak which grows in America, not the English oak we know so well here. Our pine woods are managed nationally and replanted sustainably. Our deciduous forests are also protected, as are individual trees of importance, by Tree Preservation Orders. Even if one of these grows in your garden, you can't cut even one branch without a visit first from a tree inspector, who will designate what you can cut back, if anything! My friend has a huge beech tree in her garden and she was allowed to cut only one branch which grew in front of her window. They came back to check she'd obeyed the Order.

Subject: RE: BS: Oak Furniture
From: GUEST
Date: 27 May 14 - 06:52 PM

Coppicing is used for fast-growing stems such as ash and beech which will grow a 6-10' shaft without side-shoots, ideal for hurdles, wattle-and-daub panels in wood-framed housing, and handles of all sorts. Slightly thicker ones can be turned for spindles for furniture. But it's no use for thicker pieces, the stems growing together produce a spalted wood from the bark. Pretty, but not strong.

Subject: RE: BS: Oak Furniture
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 May 14 - 09:14 AM

Good quality lumber is being recycled from old buildings and sunken logs are pulled out of lakes and rivers where they dropped out of a boom of logs headed for a mill. But that doesn't explain all of the lumber in use. I wonder if a lot of the furniture you see today doesn't simply have a veneer of oak.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Oak Furniture
From: GUEST
Date: 28 May 14 - 09:27 AM

I've had a good look and one specialist company's output certainly isn't veneer in the baulks. In the panels, I wonder.
In a way, I'm not too sorry if it goes into use and lasts 300 years, it has to be better than a certain Swedish company's blown-together rubbish. As long as it's replanted...

Subject: RE: BS: Oak Furniture
From: gnu
Date: 28 May 14 - 01:26 PM

SRS... most is veneer. I used plywood with an oak or birch veneer for shelves and solid for the posts and such. Usually maple for the trim as it's easier to mill the small pieces.

Subject: RE: BS: Oak Furniture
From: GUEST
Date: 29 May 14 - 07:37 AM

In case you can't tell, look for the end-grain: if it's got some depth to it, that end at any rate is unlikely to be veneer.

Subject: RE: BS: Oak Furniture
From: Musket
Date: 29 May 14 - 07:54 AM

My outside dining table and chairs are oak. They were bought about four years ago and according to the guarantee, they are a fast growing Vietnamese oak.

They came covered in a hard lacquer and were shiny. After leaving them outside all year round for three seasons, the lacquer has thankfully just about peeled off, the wood has had a few cracks appear and it is all just about perfect now. Good oak should be varnish / lacquer free, allowed to have a little slit here and there, and once it settles down, makes excellent outdoor furniture with no maintenance for many years.

Indoor oak of course, you can do what you may for aesthetic reasons, although some oak beams in the old part of our house that I exposed when we refurbished look great now. They were installed in 1863 and other than a wipe to remove grime, are ok.

The oak parquet flooring I put in is cheating though. It is 5mm oak glued to pine boards. This is thick enough to sand and restain in future years, but going nowhere due to the pine boards that interlock and fit like any other modern wooden flooring.

I Thought of shelving but decided I wanted a modern study in an old room, so Ikea it was then....

Subject: RE: BS: Oak Furniture
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 29 May 14 - 01:59 PM

We have an old suite of bedroom furniture in horrible white plastic (Schreiber), loads of chests-of-drawers, two double wardrobes, bedside tables, the lot. It's ghastly and we've had it for donkey's years. I was considering shelling out for some of this oak stuff, which is at least real wood not plastic. People here have reassured me that it's probably responsibly sourced and won't leave some poor little squirrel family without a home. Thank you very much everyone for your input!