Rodas Irving's bench cutting pattern

The first large wood product to be made from the OneOak tree is now in the process of being made by craftsman Rodas Irving.

Rodas has a private commission for a garden bench.  He is able to start work on this because he works with green (wet) timber.  Many of our other wood workers are still waiting for their selected pieces of timber to dry.

He selected OneOak boards 1.19 and 3.5 (see our board catalogue).  At his Oxfordshire workshop he has now marked out the pattern and cut the pieces ready to begin construction.

Rodas said  “You only get one chance at this so you need to get it right. The slab of oak I chose from the One Oak was taken from the top third of the trunk, and this tends to have more than it’s fair share of big branches. Generally that’s bad news, but for this bench I need some long pieces with grain that follows the curve of the piece; specifically for the two back legs which are almost S shaped. The big branches create waves in the grain allowing me to position the cuts to follow these.”

You can read more and follow Rodas’ work on the bench on his blog.