Joe, Steve and Jim recently set sail to France in order to catch up with some of our fabulous green oak suppliers. It was a great chance to find out more about how our oak makes its way from their forest to your home.
“It was absolutely fascinating – and reassuring – to see how much care and expertise goes into the selection, processing and transportation of each raw beam” said Steve, Head of Procurement and Sustainability at Border Oak.
“We were particularly impressed to learn how the mills make use of every cubic inch of timber nowadays – scanning the trunks and setting sophisticated computer programming to establish how best to create our beams from the core, and then create flooring, fencing and furniture grade pieces around our central beam so that nothing is wasted”.
“It really echoes our own approach to minimising waste at every step – and especially important as all Border Oak timber must to be FSC® and PEFC accredited, and is felled to order just for us, so is far too valuable to waste.” said Jim.
Some of our partner mills are very traditional – with small, local teams hand processing oak to our very high specification. Steve particularly enjoyed meeting a new mill owner and his predecessor – who Steve had worked with for more than 25 years without having met in person!
They all reflected on how the long term relationship had a positive impact upon both businesses – and upon the ecological stability and sustainability of the oak farms. The new owner remains committed to our special relationship and wholeheartedly shared our love of oak framed buildings
Our larger mill partners deploy a greater level of technology. In fact it is so high tech that the selection supervisors can only observe the complex computer modelling in 1.5 hour stints – as it is mentally exhausting to scrutinise each piece of oak so thoroughly! The guys were given an ‘end to end’ tour following a single oak trunk through the very detailed process.
From the point of order (we produce ‘cutting lists’ for every home which sets out each required piece of oak from our bespoke drawings and is sent directly to our merchants) to the forest, through the mill and then to delivery in our yard. The oak beam the guys watched through the system was delivered to our HQ in Herefordshire a few weeks later, then entered our workshop and is now in someone’s home.
Fortunately both the traditional and the modern timber mills are able meet our very high specification requirements, which were set more than 40 years ago and help us maintain our unrivalled quality. Our mill partners explained that our specification was much higher than their other green oak customers, but they also appreciated that quality is important to Border Oak, and are keen to help us uphold these standards.
Border Oak believe it’s still very important to order the oak for each project individually (rather than holding large quantities of generic beams which tend to be lower quality stock cut to run through a machine) and to only work with the best, most ethical and most reliable mills in England and France. Top notch ‘restoration’ grade oak that aligns with our sustainability credentials is fundamental to all that we do and all that we promise to our carpenters and clients.
Our partners were surprised to hear that we have qualified timber graders at HQ so that we can inspect each delivery and make informed decisions. They were also astounded, but thrilled, to hear that all of our frames are made by hand using medieval carpentry techniques. We hope they enjoyed seeing examples of what we have made and the homes people live in – all created from their raw products.
Joe, Jim and Steve all agreed that it was an incredible visit. “It was so good to meet our suppliers, learn more about their process and businesses, and to experience how professional and exacting our partners are,” said Joe. “The guys in France were loved the brochures we gave them and learning that our homes are designed and made to last for centuries”.