The question we get most often from other joiners is not about our machines or our process. It is about the timber. Specifically, why we grow our own Douglas Fir when the same species is readily available from UK timber merchants at a competitive price.
The answer has three parts: provenance, consistency, and drying control. None of these is unique to Douglas Fir — they apply to any timber you grow and process yourself — but Douglas Fir is the species that makes the argument clearest.
Provenance
Imported Douglas Fir comes predominantly from British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. The better grades come from old-growth or managed second-growth stands with tight, slow growth rings and high heartwood-to-sapwood ratios. This is good timber. But by the time it reaches a UK merchant, it has been harvested, transported, landed, seasoned to export specification, shipped again, and graded on arrival. The chain between tree and workshop is four to six steps long and involves parties with different standards, different economic incentives, and different definitions of what “structural grade” means.
When we use timber from our own woodland, that chain is one step. We select the tree, fell it, mill it, dry it, and cut it. We know which coupes in our woodland it came from, which year it was felled, and what the growth ring count looks like at the mid-point of the log. That is not information available on a merchant certificate.
Consistency
Douglas Fir grown in North Wales is not identical to Douglas Fir grown in British Columbia. The growth rate is different — our trees grow slower in the Welsh climate, producing tighter growth rings and, in our experience, slightly denser timber with less variation between boards from the same log. We have not done systematic comparative testing, but we have made enough furniture and joinery from both sources to have a strong empirical view.
More importantly: because we manage the woodland ourselves, consecutive harvests from the same coupe have a consistency you cannot get from a merchant supply chain. The timber behaves predictably because we understand its growth conditions and process it the same way each time.
Drying control
Most joinery failures that are blamed on “wood movement” are failures of drying specification. Timber dried too quickly, dried to the wrong moisture content for its end use, or dried correctly but then stored badly before fabrication.
We air-dry for a minimum of two years before kiln finishing. We dry to Specification details are available on request from the workshop.% for interior joinery, Specification details are available on request from the workshop.% for structural work. We test with a calibrated meter before the timber enters the workshop. When movement appears in service — and some movement always does — we know it is not a drying failure, because we controlled the drying. That allows us to diagnose the actual cause rather than blaming the material.
Is it worth it?
For us, yes. The economics of growing and milling your own timber require long-term investment and a certain production volume — it does not make sense for every joinery workshop. But we already had the woodland and the mill as part of the broader Citadel Group. The decision to use own-grown timber for joinery production was less a business case and more a logical extension of what we were already doing.
The practical benefit is that we start every commission with a material advantage. We know what we are working with. That matters more than almost anything else in making joinery that performs correctly over time.
More on our woodland: Our Woodland →