About Sussex Oak Products
What we’re about
Our company ethos is very simple, we source good quality local materials, create beautiful Oak framed structures and products and supply them at a fair and reasonable price. We support local businesses wherever possible and always consider our impact on the environment.
Who we are
We are a small family run company offering Oak frame buildings, structures and architectural components to the trade and the public. We are located on the site of a small family run sawmill which supplies us with all of our green oak , this obviously has many advantages and reduces our carbon footprint while supporting a fellow local family run business. The Oak we use and supply is locally grown English Oak, all of which comes from sustainable and ethically managed woodlands in Sussex, Kent and Surrey.
Where we are
We are located at Copford Farm, Dern Lane, Waldron, we work with and alongside the sawmill here. Huge advantages to this, no delivery costs/import fees to factor in to our products compared with European Oak, the trees come into the yard, sawn on the mill and then travel 100 yards into our workshop! It also means our production line is streamlined, we know exactly where we are with each order, if a beam isn’t suitable for its application, we may have a wait of hours rather than days/weeks for a replacement. Our customers are welcome to come to our site and see the journey of a tree from log to finished product.
How we do it
While we try to preserve the heritage of oak framing, we are also running a business so it’s not practical to work as they did in the past, we try to keep it traditional where we can. We use as many traditional jointing methods as possible, we mortise and tenon all our post and beam connections and also the knee braces. The head plates we use a tenoned scarf joint or tenoned half lap joint and tie beams we tend to use half lap dovetail joint or cog joint. We dry fit our frames before being packed down ready to go to site. We mark each component to make assembly on site as quick and easy as possible.