Colour and Appearance
Timber, as a naturally occur ring material growing under a wide variety of physical and climatic conditions, is prone to variation of colour, shade, grain pattern, texture and density. Most of these features are intangible and we can only offer our subjective opinion, so customers are urged to exercise their own judgement,based on their chosen criteria.We are very happy for customers to make their own selection from our stock and we encourage the use of a plane or chisel to allow a clearer appreciation of underlying colour and texture. When asked to make a selection on a customer’s behalf, it must be accepted that although we aim for the best appearance with least contrast, all judgment is subjective and the timber will be, at worst, ‘as rising’.
The paler, temperate hardwoods such as Maple, Sycamore and Beech have a, as yet not fully understood, propensity to react chemically with drying laths during the kilning process. This, unfortunately, sometimes results in a grey ’sticker shadow’ across each board, at about 600 mm intervals. Until recently, this was of little concern since timber of these species was usually painted, stained or placed out of sight.We do our best to minimise this feature and must stress that these timbers are offered with sticker shadow as an allowable defect. We have heard that customers frequently alleviate the impact of this mark by bleaching (which is not always effective) or masking with an equalizing stain.