Materials and Finish
There are only three things in anything we make: hardwood, oil, and occasionally a wireless charger. Here's what each one actually is.
The wood
Solid hardwood, all the way through. Not veneer over particle board, not solid on the faces and hollow underneath. When you cut one of our tables in half — please don't — it's the same material the whole way down.
| Maple | Pale, close-grained, almost creamy. The quietest of the four. It's what we'd reach for if you want the wood to sit back and let the room talk. |
| Walnut | Chocolate brown with purple and grey running through it. The most expensive thing we buy and the one most people fall for. It lightens slightly with age rather than darkening. |
| Oak | Open-grained and strong, with the visible ray flecks people picture when they picture wood. It takes colour better than the others, which is why the stains live here. |
| Mahogany | Reddish-brown, stable, and it deepens as it ages instead of fading. Costs more than oak and maple because the material costs more. That's the whole reason. |
On stain
We stain oak. We don't stain maple, walnut or mahogany.
That isn't us being precious. Oak has an open grain that takes pigment evenly and comes out looking deliberate. The other three are close-grained, and stain sits on them in patches — you get a walnut table that looks like a walnut table someone spilled something on.
There's a second reason. You're buying solid walnut instead of a laminate that looks like walnut because the figure goes all the way through and moves as the light crosses it. Painting over that is paying for something and then hiding it.
So oak comes five ways — natural, ebony, pink, weathered grey and rustic whitewash — and everything else comes as itself. If you're matching a piece you already own, oak is the wood to ask us about.
The finish
Everything we make is finished in Odie's Universal Oil. It's a tung-oil-based hardwax finish, and we use it on every piece — the cutting boards and the furniture both.
What matters about it:
- It's food safe. The same finish is on our cutting boards as on our coffee tables. No driers, no heavy metals, no petroleum solvents.
- It bonds into the wood rather than sitting on top. So it can't peel, chip or flake the way a film finish like polyurethane does.
- It's repairable in place. Scratch a lacquered table and you're stripping the whole top. Scratch this and you re-oil the spot. That's the entire repair.
- It contains natural UV inhibitors, which slows the fading you'd otherwise get from a sunny window.
We didn't choose it because it's fashionable. We chose it because a finish you can repair yourself, at home, with a rag, is a finish that lets you keep the thing for thirty years.
Looking after it
- Boards: hand wash, and never let them sit wet or soak. Don't put them in the dishwasher — that's what kills wooden boards, not use.
- Furniture: wipe with a damp cloth. No polish, no wax, no cleaning spray.
- Re-oil when the surface starts to look thirsty rather than on a schedule. On a board that's every few months; on a table it might be once a year. A small jar of Odie's costs about the same as a takeaway and lasts for years.
What wood does, and what isn't a fault
Grain, colour and figure vary from board to board and from the photographs. Two tables in the same wood will not be twins. That's the material, and it's the reason to buy it.
Solid wood also moves a little with the seasons — it takes on moisture in humid months and gives it back in dry ones. You may notice a joint that's very slightly proud in August and flush in January. That's the piece behaving exactly as it should.
Where it's made
New Braunfels, Texas. Every piece, by hand, by us. Our hardwood comes from sustainably managed forests in the United States.