On Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:57:16 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
You just have to know where to look. Bags of incredible quality oak
stuff made in west of england and wales..and in fact all over

Watched an old Grand Designs yesterday and a forester type said a 150 year
old oak only sells for 100 quid. Must be lots of profit in processing and
retailing it...

There is. Which is why it makes little sense to buy cheap wood to make
things with. The cost is all in the value added labour content.
I think a 'victorian pine door' is only 30-50 quid less than the same
thing in oak, both being around 200 quid sort of range.

I suppose that might explain all the looks-nice-but-not-very-strong
furniture around too, then - they can't skimp on the labour or
man-hours because the thing still needs to look good in order to sell, so
they start cutting corners in the raw amount of material used. It doesn't
save them much, but they figure it's better than nothing.

(I suppose it's not that big a deal to me, because I can always strengthen
things as/when needed without altering cosmetic appearance - it's just a
little annoying that I know I'm going to need to do that in a few years,
when something of supposed 'good quality' built a few hundred years ago
would have gone much longer without any attention)

cheers

Jules