Where to buy oak wood for E15 Backenzahn Stool?

[heatherw]

I see this thread is stirring up the silt a bit, I like this stool. It's obviously not practical, you can't get hold of it to move it about and you'd probably be off work for a couple of months if it fell over in the process and happened to catch your foot, but the photos make me want to reach out and touch it. It might not be such a simple matter to copy it unless you can get close to one to measure it, though. And the dowels would have to be pretty hefty to resist the strain if the stool did fall over. At least 25mm, wouldn't you think? Probably more.

Lomisz, you don't say whereabouts in North London you are? In North East London there are loads of timber merchants, I used to get timber cut more or less to size and transport it on my bicycle or on the bus although I vividly remember carrying a 12 foot plank of maple 2 miles on foot on one accasion because I couldn't get it cut up. But in this case we seem to be talking about maybe 6" oak? That's a bit more specialised although there used to be a couple of sawmills around Mile End on the canal. They might have moved out of London by now though.

In fact, what with sourcing, paying for, cutting up and having delivered six inch oak, not to mention having to handle it afterwards (I can envisage a lot of black fingernails and pinched fingers) the selling price is beginning not to look so steep after all.

 

[Togalosh]

..yes really big dowels or square wedged pegs ..the bigger the better (within reason).

I can't imagine woodworking without a van...but I know what a hassle having a van is like in London.

As for seeing more than a piece of furniture - I get that ..but I don't. I find it annoying to make furniture into sculpture or pretend that a sculpture is a piece of furniture. Each may have an element of the other but furniture has to be absolutely practical, comfy & used. Furniture does not belong in a gallery unless you are pretentious.

I love sculpture but it's cheating to use a beautiful wood for this as wood it is captivating in it's own right..same as photographing people - we are infinatily interested in looking at ourselves so it's easy to make a good photo as long as it's a characteristic face you shoot ..& you know the basics of photography.

...it's the charging of a king's ranson that is irksome for that 'stool' (or that 1-hour-made, machine cut dovetail jointed box !) .. especially when there are far greater craftsmen who's work goes under valued..but that's life it seems.

 

[Lomisz]

Thanks you all for the advice. After following up a few leads that some of you have suggested I begin to understand why it has such a high price. I have been quoted by 3 different timber merchants just under £400 for the four pieces of wood in AIR dried oak! One even said that he cant even get that dimentions and it will need to made out of glued 2 pieces. This might be the reason why the stool is so expensive. So air dried oak is out of the qustion. Planed green oak is under £100. If i get it planed it saves me a lot of finishing work. I dont mind it cracking as it gives it a lot of character but i dont want it warping sideways.

 

[Chrispy]

This all just goes to show how making something look simple in design and construction is often very difficult.
just finding 6" square Oak of good quality then working it and joining it up, finishing it packaging it and the delivery, the chance that the buyer will send it back at your expense because it looks different to the photo or there is a split underneath or one leg is a different colour or they don't like knots, the reasons are endless. that I think you will find is why they are so priced.

I wish you well in copying some one elses design and hope you are happy with the result.

 

[Togalosh]

Thanks you all for the advice. After following up a few leads that some of you have suggested I begin to understand why it has such a high price. I have been quoted by 3 different timber merchants just under £400 for the four pieces of wood in AIR dried oak! One even said that he cant even get that dimentions and it will need to made out of glued 2 pieces. This might be the reason why the stool is so expensive. So air dried oak is out of the qustion. Planed green oak is under £100. If i get it planed it saves me a lot of finishing work. I dont mind it cracking as it gives it a lot of character but i dont want it warping sideways.

Air dried timber of those dimensions could be 20 - 30 years old or more & rare I'd imagine.. hence the price. Try kiln dried.

Crispy - you make a valid point.. my initial instinct was that it was a rip off, but of course price is not just based on materials ..& overheads can be a killer.

 

[jackss565]

Hi,

If i have got this right then you are looking for 4 pieces of air dried oak 130x130x450mm. If so there is no way that should come close to £400. We could supply all the pieces for £55.40 + VAT. Add around £50 for pallet delivery and your total cost is around £115. That is for air dried french oak, green would be about 25% less than that

Thanks
Jack

 

[Lomisz]

Whow, can i order from you? Are selling it?

The price of almost £400 was quoted by 3 different suppliers.

 

[jackss565]

Whow, can i order from you? Are selling it?

The price of almost £400 was quoted by 3 different suppliers.

Hi Lomisz,

You can order it via an email to [email protected] or call the office on 01273 517013, i'm sure one of the guys will be able to sort it all out for you

Thanks
Jack

 

[Sgian Dubh]

Air dried timber of those dimensions could be 20 - 30 years old or more & rare I'd imagine.. hence the price.

Not necessarily. We buy oak beams from time to time that are something like 2400 mm L X 200 X 150 which we sometimes manage to get for just under £50 each delivered to our door-- I suspect we get a discount because the supplier knows these beams are for hard-up students working on a project, and I'm aware that this price doesn't match the prices listed at the supplier's website. The beams aren't rare, and they're usually pretty wet when they arrive, and they certainly haven't been air drying for decades-- more like only three to six months in some cases. In our case, as the wood is for outside furniture and artefacts, the fact that the wood is usually pretty wet isn't of great significance, because one thing a furniture maker will generally avoid is making outdoor furniture with kiln dried wood, especially wood kilned in the USA which is kilned to 7% MC ±2% MC.

Try kiln dried.

For the dimensions in question kiln dried oak is not very likely to be available. The top of each of those stools is 270 mm square, which means each segment that makes up the square is 135 mm square. I don't know anyone kilning European oak that's thicker than 4" rough sawn. I can only think of two or three kilning operations I know of that are willing to kiln even 3" thick oak. The reason for the reluctance to kiln oak this thick, or thicker, is because the material is notoriously refractory in nature, and it's all too easy to end up with significant drying defects, especially if the operation is hurried along. Drying defects generally make the product unsellable, or if it is sold, it's usually returned to the supplier (who may also be the kiln operator) for a refund: that's what I do with defective wood because I won't accept it. Kiln drying thick oak successfully requires a gentle kilning schedule that's monitored carefully, with similarly careful tweaking of the drying stages, and this means the kiln is tied up for a very long time compared to the time needed to dry much more easily kilned woods. It also makes the oak extremely expensive because someone has to pay for all that kilning. Slainte.

 

[Lomisz]

Sorry for bringing an old thread back to life but found my old thread after coming back to ask a new question on the forum. I'm happy to say that did manage to complete the stool and here is the proof of it. It's more of a decorative piece rather than a practical stool. I'm actually now in a process of casting one out of concrete for the garden and making another hybrid one with one oak leg and 3 concrete ones. I had one piece of the oak left over from the last one.

 

[Jameshow]

Sorry for bringing an old thread back to life but found my old thread after coming back to ask a new question on the forum. I'm happy to say that did manage to complete the stool and here is the proof of it. It's more of a decorative piece rather than a practical stool. I'm actually now in a process of casting one out of concrete for the garden and making another hybrid one with one oak leg and 3 concrete ones. I had one piece of the oak left over from the last one.

View attachment 120148

Looks good I have some similar oak offcuts now I know what to do with it!

Cheers James

 

[mikej460]

Very nice, how did you fix the 4 quarters together?

 

[baldkev]

I know of that are willing to kiln even 3" thick oak. The reason for the reluctance to kiln oak this thick, or thicker, is because the material is notoriously refractory in nature, and it's all too easy to end up with significant drying defects, especially if the operation is hurried along. Drying defects generally make the product unsellable, or if it is sold, it's usually returned to the supplier

Hi slainte,
My brother has a farm made kiln and a sawmill. He does oak. Ive just bought a largeish slab ( 3" thick, about 700mm wide and 3m long ) its full of pips and detail. Normally the kiln dries stuff out quite fast and leads to defects as youve said. Would i be best sticking this in an unheated by dry storage container instead? I dont need to use it for a while
Thanks, kev

 

[Lomisz]

Very nice, how did you fix the 4 quarters together?

I have used quite thick oak dowels to put it together and all the way around them I've put 5mm thick wooden spacers to hide the dowels and they also keep the gap even.

 

[Cabinetman]

I Ihadn’t re I hadn’t realised this was an old thread revisited and was looking online at the stool, digressed slightly and found this by one of the stool makers.
My American fiancé always says I don’t charge enough for my work but this takes the cracker!
It’s 22” 65” 30” btw