Very Wide Logs 2

There are logs and logs of logs to choose from, but the turnover is huge and seasonal. Logs like these are rare. Most are not so long, not so straight and not so large in girth. Within weeks of taking this phtograph virtually all the logs you see in this phtograph had been sold. We bought some of them.

As you can see, some of these oak logs are well over 40 feet in length and will produce stunning oak boards.

This is one we bought. It was the biggest in the yard - though not the longest. Behind it lies another we bought 42 feet long and only a little smaller in diameter.

This beauty and its mud-mate have been sawn now. The big one has produced oak boards 28 feet long and up to about 44 inches wide with stunning figuring. It will produce about 400 square metres of some of the most beautiful oak board flooring in the world. At the time of purchase it was looking for a suitable home - ideally one with rooms 28 feet long or longer! It found one - in Australia. As this is being written the widest boards this beauty produced are in a container on a ship on the high seas. There, in a modern new built beach house which is still under construction we are creating floors from boards over a metre wide in single pieces 8.5 metres long. All the boards are cone shaped - wider at one end than the other - and are being fitted into rooms which are wider at one end than the other, so the cone shaped boards play with the perspective.

Once sawn to boards, the planks are reassembled as logs but with sticks separating the boards. They are stacked out in the open to allow the wind to blow through between the boards. The faces of the boards are protected from direct sunlight by the waste timber. Thus the boards dry slowly for 12 months or more. Once they are sufficiently naturally air dried and seasoned they will be shipped to the kiln where they are dried down to around 6% average moisture content.

By the way - the logs that appear to be in one single length, really are in one single length!

What never ceases to amaze us is the sheer beauty which lies hidden in these rather crabby looking lumps of wood.

This is the end of a sawn log lying in stick. The tape demonstrates the width of the boards at the narrow end. We may get boards 36 inches wide from this log.

This is a very nice 'pippy' log. A few years ago farmers would not buy pippy oak for fencing. It was unwanted and mostly went to firewood. Then talented furniture makers began to craft lovely furniture from it and suddenly the possibilities for this richly characterful timber caught on. Pippy oak is now highly sought after and very costly. This log will make some really stunning flooring for someone.

If you want a pippy oak floor of exceptional character, let us know. We will buy some special logs and cut them for especially for you. Beware of offers of pippy oak boards from stock. These unlikely to be very characterful, they are likely to be very short and not very wide.