Fuzzy Turns

I promised a post on this most wonderful of all places called Exotic Hardwoods UK, so here it is.

I found out about this place quite some time ago, when researching timbers for a variety of commissions and also some of my own work. Must have been 2 years or longer. However, I never really had a good reason to go and visit them. It just always seemed to be to far away for what really was just a nosy around king of visit.

But a few weeks ago, the stars aligned in the correct manner (and the pattern at the bottom of the coffee cup was good, too), so I decided to go and have said nosy. All with the intention to get some nice pieces of wood for a cistern lid for our new bathroom and for a wedding signature board for my niece-in-law.

It’s basically a father-and-son setup, on the grounds of farm (now defunct) in Staffordshire, about 15 miles out of Stoke-on-Trent to the east. Very idyllic countryside scenery.

Even though I had phoned ahead and agreed a time, nobody was to be seen when I arrived on site. So I wandered a little and first walked into what could previously have been a pig sty. All cleaned up now, and filled with shelf after shelf of luthier material: fretboards, some presawn, matched pieces for top and bottom of instruments, and so on. Hundreds, in all sorts of really beautiful wood, mostly exotic.

Eventually somebody appeared (the father) and we got chatting, and he says: well, I guess, this section isn’t really for you. You really want to see the main store. So of we went towards a shed (barn?) of approximately 20m deep and 40m wide (and about 6-8m high in the centre). And here it goes: the whole thing is full of wood. On one side there are shelves with the smaller pieces. Name any exotic species used in turning, instrument making, cabinet making, anywhere, he’s got it. And then some.

On the other side there are just stacks. There’s a stack of purpleheart plank, about 1m high, each plank is about 6-8″ wide, 2″ thick and 8 foot long. Another stack of similar size of birdseye maple (I got myself a piece of that for my cistern lid). Stack after stack after stack. Most of them they can’t even get to with the forklift. In some places the stacks are more than 4m high.

When I started looking around, I eventually stumbled across a piece of wood that seemed to be a little out of place. Dark, heavy, not stacked, with almost white sapwood. When dad noticed my interest, he told me it was cocobolo. This piece was about 5ft long, 4″ thick and easily 16″ wide. Value: around £1000.

I could have spent all day in that shed. As it was, I only had about 90 minutes, and I really had to remind myself that I was here primarily to find those pieces mentioned above (which I did) and leave the rest alone until I had a really good reason to spend my money. The only concession I made was about 1kg of cutoffs of snakewood, at the cost of about £25/kg. But let me tell you: there’s a reason why this stuff is so expensive: Even without any finish on it, it polishes to a marvellous shine, and the figure in the grain is just unbelievable.

So in the end I walked away with 2 large pieces of wood and a collection of cutoffs and about £140 less in my pocket. And if I ever need something really special, or just plain good, let me tell you: this is the place to go. By their own admission, they supply just about everybody else in the UK. You want something you can’t get anywhere else: chances are they have it.

I had last week off work, burning off my annual leave. We didn’t do any shows this year, and dedicate a lot of energy to the modernisation of the house, so it just never happened, and now I have to take my leave as otherwise it is forfeit.

The idea was to get a few things done around the house and garden, and then make some really nice progress with various bits of turning and general wood working. In the end I got hardly any turning done.

I made myself a list of things to do during the week. We had a broken fence panel that needed replacing, my petrol chainsaw needs some TLC, I needed a new jigsaw, and I wanted to get all the bits required for a new, bigger, steady, so that I could long, hollow, unbalanced pieces. I also wanted to make some progress with a nice wooden lid for the cistern in our new bathroom, and with the wooden signature panel for my niece-in-law, who’s getting married next March.

Not so bad, you say. Just wait.

The jigsaw, various invoices to pay, and a few phone calls, these were all the easy things. Just ordering the wheels for the steady took several hours, because the guys from the website I had chosen, after getting some good advice, just kept on faffing around with their back order.

On Monday, I inspected the fence. I found that only the last 3 panels were actually in a decent condition, the rest were all rotten and just hanging in there for the next storm (or cat). So I decided to replace all the panels. The posts looked a little better, I thought, so I decided to only replace 3 of them. After lunch I went to Lawnswood Fencing, and ordered the pieces, for delivery on Thursday, and then went off to visit Exotic Hardwoods in Staffordshire. What a place! More on that later, in a separate post.

Tuesday morning was spent supporting the guys at work, and the afternoon had some good workshop time. Wednesday was also workshop time.

Thursday morning I started ripping out the fence panels, and the posts marked for replacement. That’s when I noticed that the other posts were actually in no better condition. So I went back to the fencing company and bought another 5 posts and caps. And then I spent the rest of the day fitting the new fence. Looks gorgeous, but by 6pm I was bushed.

Already on Thursday evening, I had the RCB tripping on me several times, but I decided to only look at that on Friday. Phoned the sparky Friday morning, but he was busy and could only give me some advice over the phone. I basically spent all Friday hunting down the problem and in the end I just gave up and decided to leave for the sparky on Monday, I still have 2 working circuits in the shop, so I could always make a plan!

Yeah well, best laid plans and all that. Friday night, or rather Saturday morning we had an almighty downpour at around 3am to 5am. I just recently installed a water butt outside the workshop (it was standing somewhere else in the garden, with no gutter connected to it). This water butt is about 120cm high and about 60cm diameter, so holds roughly 225 litres of water (that’s about 50 gallons in old money). This one downpour filled the entire butt to overflow! Unfortunately it seems it was also combined with a strong wind, and when I got into the workshop on Saturday morning (to fix the electrics), I had 15 litres of water on the floor in the paint/compressor room, most of it actually under the floating floor for the compressor and the two chip/dust extractors.

So I then spent a few hours cleaning up the mess, and then the entire weekend replacing the facia boards with new ones. Which is really fun, as all of them go right up underneath the tar paper, so essentially I cannot rip them off entirely, otherwise I’d have to recover the entire roof. I had to cut them off with the circular saw, lying on my belly (on the wet tar paper), negotiate all the rusty nails (the blade is now proper ruined) and then in a similar fashion had to fix the new ones, and finally caulk the lot. Now I need the caulk to set, and then I can paint it over next weekend.

So: it’s Sunday evening, almost 8pm, I am completely knackered, and got hardly anything done in the workshop. And tomorrow morning it’s back to the dayjob. What a week!