crafts


turning and furnishings

Wood turners tend to use oak to make sturdy bowls, stair parts and handrails.Oak can be worked green or kiln dried, though green wood items will warp a little with age.

Oak is very well known in furniture making, a prize wood in the craft. Furniture made from oak has incredible durability as it is the least likely wood to be attacked by fungus and insects once it is kiln dried.

construction carpentry

Oak is superb in building construction. It was extremely popular for the building of those Tudor houses, all those big dark beams.

Today, nobody uses oak in construction to save money as availability of the wood is scarces. Very few homes will invest in it. We are fortunate to live in a cottage where the lintels are made of very hard durable bog oak. If you do get a deal on oak, and you are constructing, go for it!

If oak is used in construction maybe the most important use is for the front door. Some folks say the modern word "door" has derived from the word "duir".

The reason visiting folks knock on a door was not originally for good manners but for obtaining permission to pass through the oak into the inner world of the residents behind the door. Knocking and obtaining permission to enter was regarded as a protection action for the visitor as uch as it was for the visited.

other crafts

On the next page I talk of using oak in fires. Really, these days, no oak should reach the hearth, but it does. My own suggestion is that if you are lucky enough to have oak added to your wood pile make something with it, no matter how small your oak wood is. Toys, kitchen tools, shelves, stands etc.



to read about Oak as a fuel in the hearth, please click here