by Trevanion » 06 Aug 2022, 11:27
I had the sample piece off the International Timber representative about four or so years ago now, it’s a type of Eucalyptus and the growth cycle must be quite quick as there was about one growth ring per inch. I’ve personally never used the stuff as I was always a bit skeptic from the outset, a good friend tried a few boards to see what it was like and you would’ve thought they would send as best quality boards as they could to a new user to impress, but I saw the boards myself and they were riddled with severe splits, totally unusable. Perhaps the QC is better now but I still wouldn’t use the stuff.
You will struggle to find a native timber that’s of a decent quality for joinery, the majority of the good stuff was cut down over a century ago. Softwoods like Douglas Fir or Larch that are grown here grow too quickly and don’t develop much of the characteristics that make for a good joinery timber, the main one being water ingress resistance. Back in the day they would’ve used a very nice timber called pitch pine, which was absolutely full of resin and was practically indestructible, some attribute the longevity to the paint, but when you see pitch pine windows with no paint left whatsoever and they’re still standing strong after a century it must be the timber. Scots Pine that’s available now by contrast will last only a handful of years, I’ve seen new windows rot out completely in five years.
I think if I wanted to avoid tropic hardwoods, as well as the expensive Accoya, I would probably look at a very high grade of Douglas fir (Do not use British grown Douglas fir!) or Southern Yellow Pine from North America. You could also use home-grown British Oak but that would be just about as expensive as the Accoya.