ENGLISH BROWN OAK PART I

English brown oak is one of my favorite darker woods.  Now, I’m speaking only of the very best quality brown oak, because, I have seen some brown oak that just isn’t very interesting at all.  Brown oak is not a different species from regular English oak, which is a type of white oak.  The trees that produce brown oak, have been infested with the beefsteak fungus, that softens and darkens the heart wood, but leaves the sap wood still very light in color.  From my experience, brown oak can vary greatly from tree to tree, depending on how long the tree has been infested with the fungus.  Some can be just a bit darker and softer than light oak, while others can be quite dark and significantly softer.  Therefore, one must be careful with the structural integrity of this material.  At furniture college, in England, one of my fellow students was excited about making a chair out of some very lovely brown oak that he had acquired.  However, all of the instructors were very adamant, “No!  Brown oak is not appropriate for chair making, it’s strength has been too greatly compromised by the fungus!”  With that in mind, I’ve only made “cabinets” with this special material.

Specifically, I’ve made three different cabinets of English brown oak, each inspired by a similar piece, by my mentor, James Krenov.  At this stage of my woodworking career, I considered each item that I made, to be a training exercise, with each successive piece being more complex than the previous one.  The first was a small wall-hung cabinet with a single convex door.  This simple book-matched door was the ideal platform to show off the beauty of  this magnificent brown oak plank, which I had found at a saw mill in England. This is an excellent example of what I call the “very best quality” brown oak.  The really light sapwood, the quarter-sawn ray flecks, and the interspersed  darker spots, and the lighter streaks, contrast beautifully with the rich, warm dark-brown oak.  And, because it is softer than regular oak, it is a joy to work with hand planes and chisels.