Why don't we use more Chestnut?

[mikej460]

One major use in the UK was/is for palings joined by twisted wire - these can take being knocked into the ground and seem to even outlast oak in this situation where so many woods rot fast (stuck outside in British weather, untreated, half in the soil) - just been removing some 30+ year old palings from the middle of a hedge - the galvanised wire has mostly rusted away, but the palings are destined for further use. They are cleft, not sawn, and far from straight, but look great to my eye.

Yes I've just bought a load of pales to hold up a new dead hedge. Sweet Chestnut lasts for donkey's years in the ground but when I built our pergola I dug out the 6-7" post holes with only an inch or two of space around then back filled with rammed gravel, as that is what the supplier advised.

 

[HexusOdy]

I've bought a lot of cleft sweet chestnut for the garden over the years and I'm planning to buy a load of post and rail sections soon.. Once when I was talking to the owner of Say It With Wood in Herefordshire about chestnut cladding he said that it does have a tendency to split badly resulting in a lot of waste hence it's lack of appeal with sawmills. I wonder if it's something to do with speed of growth? Most rustic chestnut in the UK comes from pollarded trees which by their very nature grow fast and straight.

I think every timber has it's foibles. Chestnut can split, it's why it's used so much for cleaved fencing and makes great shakes etc

But Oak has it's foibles too. I've but lovely dry, straight lengths of oak that has released tension and both have become instant bananas.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I cut a piece 10' baulk of an unknown African mahogany for a door frame - one side I could have kept for a straight edge, the other was both winding and bowed. Sometime you don't know what'll happen until it's cut smaller.

 

[2sheds]

I'm almost at the end of a terrific furniture making course (8 weeks, 3 days a week) at Sylva Wood School and we used sweet chestnut for a couple of pieces, really nice to work with and looks lovely. Sylva (Sylva Foundation) promote the use of local timber, but as has been said, it isn't a quick thing.
Vastern do supply it if you are near Swindon. English Sweet Chestnut Sawn Timber - Vastern. I don't know how the price compares though.

 

[Mark Karacsonyi]

I am curious, having not been in the UK, for close to thirty years, l used to use a lot of ash and beech. Was living near Thornbury near Bristol.

Now I am in Hungary, outside of pine construction every thing you get commercially or from the forester is in logs - width length are the working points. So, one needs to mill yourself or take it somewhere to have it milled. Colleges are great for this.

Most common woods here are oak, chestnut, ash & beech acacia - (robinia) also an abundance of fruit woods. Peach is one of my favourites. What I am saying is, here we use a lot of our native woods.

 

[Doug B]

Think it’s more to do with where you source your timber, I bought a cubic meter a few years back & have been using it for outdoor projects ever since. It reallly is a lovely timber to use this is a gate I made a couple of years ago.

 

[mikej460]

From the Vastern website:
Sweet chestnut trees suffer from ‘stress’ and as the boards often split up the middle after cutting they do not tend to be particularly wide.
Thanks for the pointer @2sheds as I have a plan to build a couple of Adirondack chairs one day.

 

[dannyr]

From the Vastern website:
Sweet chestnut trees suffer from ‘stress’ and as the boards often split up the middle after cutting they do not tend to be particularly wide.
Thanks for the pointer @2sheds as I have a plan to build a couple of Adirondack chairs one day.

maybe something to do with the way they grow - if you look at the grain of the bark of a living sweet chestnut, it often (usually?) spirals around the trunk, which may suggest something similar going on inside.

 

[pgrbff]

You occasionaly get logs that split or separate along the growth rings.

 

[HexusOdy]

I'm almost at the end of a terrific furniture making course (8 weeks, 3 days a week) at Sylva Wood School and we used sweet chestnut for a couple of pieces, really nice to work with and looks lovely. Sylva (Sylva Foundation) promote the use of local timber, but as has been said, it isn't a quick thing.
Vastern do supply it if you are near Swindon. English Sweet Chestnut Sawn Timber - Vastern. I don't know how the price compares though.

That school looks bloody awesome. We should have more of them.

 

[isaac3d]

Much of the timber trade is mysterious. And the impetus of commerce doesn't synchronise very well with the time it takes (hardwood) trees to grow to planking size. Someone has to plant and start to manage a product that will only come to market beyond their lifetime. There were Victorian landowners who thought in terms of posterity, but these days forestry is more in the scope of hedge fund managers who want a quick fix. I don't have an answer to that.

This is the reality of life. Given that trees take so long to grow and that they are a resource that the whole country needs, both now and (perhaps even more so) in the future, the responsibility for growing trees should not be left primarily in the hands of private individuals. The government should invest massively in planting hardwood forests for future generations. Sadly, most politicians and all governments in recent decades can't (or won't) look beyond the next election.
So, who is to blame? The politicians? Not really; people choose governments based on what is important to them. The future availability of timber is not in the minds of most people. Most people also can't or won't look beyond the next payrise. So who is to blame? We are! The people who live in the UK could invest in the future but we do very little of that because we are too short sighted and selfish. Sad but true.