ENGLISH BROWN OAK PART II

I have been generally disappointed with the quality of what little English brown oak I have come across, back in this country.  Therefore, I wasn’t too hopeful when my friend Art Eisenbrand called, one day, to say that he had just received a shipment, from London, with some quarter-sawn English brown oak, that I might be interested in.  Well, he had some one-inch-thick brown oak that was every bit as magnificent as any I had seen in England.  Of course, it wasn’t cheap!  I could only afford two planks, but that would be just enough to make two more small cabinets.

Now, these two planks of quarter-sawn brown oak had been straight-edged on the pith side, at the mill, but the outer edge had been left in tact, with about two inches of  creamy sapwood running the entire length.  For various reasons, sapwood is usually undesirable, and we cut it off and discard it in favor of the better quality heartwood.  But, the more I looked at these planks, the more I was drawn into the beauty of this sapwood, the way it magically transitioned into the rich, brown heartwood.  And I was taken by the glorious contrast between the two.  But, I had already decided on a design for my next cabinet, and it had to be heartwood only.  So, when I ripped off the sapwood, I decided to come back into the heartwood about an inch, or so, leaving me with a couple of three inch wide strips of sapwood, with a bit of heartwood in tact.  I put these “cut-offs”  away for possible future consideration, and dutifully, went to work on my next English brown oak wall cabinet.

This next cabinet was a bit larger and more involved than the first.  I wanted to tackle doing a pair of curved frame and panel doors, and I also wanted to incorporate a different wood for the panels.  I really like the idea of using a bit of spalted wood in conjunction with brown oak, because it has also been significantly altered by a fungus.  In this case, I book matched some spalted English beech, which contrasted and toned beautifully with the brown oak.