Traditional carpentry and timber framing is first and foremost a joy, the sweet smell of fresh cut oak fills the air, the sharp blade cuts a clean edge without resistance, the patterns of grain that reveal and are for the first time seen, the physical labour and mental arithmetic, and the splendid detail and beauty that nature has given us to work with. It’s a privilege to work in this craft and the reward is seeing the timber that has been worked upon stand in splendid grandeur, and to know my hand made that and it will be there when I have long gone.

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I suppose you could argue that saying something is traditional just means of its day it was the way things were done, and that’s probably because they didn’t have the same level of technology however, in timber framing it's more about saying we tried loads of different ways of doing this and to be honest this is still the best way. It means we have made mistakes and have learned from our forefathers that this way things will last. Today you can get a company that has invested thousands of pound in state of the art CNC milling machines and let’s be honest there is definitely some advantages in programming a computer and leaving it to do all the work especially when your primary concern is saving time. At Calder Oak we are not Luddites and we understand that some people only want the end product and maybe you are not concerned with how it was made and who made it…fair enough.

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