3⁄4" Cuban Mahogany II

Well Gregor sanded the slab of reclaimed wood that I bought recently at Steptoe's Yard in Montrose. What we both thought was weathered Cuban Mahogany turned out to be Teak. Well done to Gregor for his professional identification. Teak is even harder than Mahogany. There are Janka Hardness charts for various species of wood on the Internet.

Gregor cut this up to construct two new "meal shelves" which were once a feature of the bedroom corridors at Balintore Castle for the servants to use for holding trays.

As the reclaimed material is not the same wood type as the original mahogany, we thought it best to recreate a pair of missing shelves from scratch rather than repair existing shelves.

sanded and cut-up teak

And in fact, to get a pair of shelves out of the one slab, we had to make them 18" wide instead of the original 20". I don't think anyone is going to notice.  :-)  I sumggested cutting the shelves out across the grain instead of with the grain to get the the right size, but Gregor said they could split and we should honour the grain orientation of the original shelves.

Gregor could not locate a router bit in his case to match the original moulding of the shelve edges, and was starting to fret a little. However, he had one bit that was the right shape but just a tadge smaller in scale. I convinced him this was good enough - it certainly was to my eye. Sometimes when perfection is not achieveable, it just needs someone with a more objective outlook to say "good enough" to the person trying to solve the problem.

Gregor's router bits

The routered shelving looks great. :-) Aside from the shelf proper, there is also a section of wood that is attached to the wall, and a small section of shelf 2" deep to which the large main shelf is hinged. The depth of the main shelf was unknown as there are none left, but I remarked to Gregor that my eye and sense of proportion said they should be 12". Gregor was hovering at 10", and I suggested we could try looking at the original plans.

routered teak

Anyhow, I looked at the original plans this evening, and found this.

meal shelves described in the original plans

By a miracle, my guess at the shelf depth was spot on: 2" on one side of the hinge and 12" deep on the other making the 14" mentioned in the plans. Channel that building hurrahs! :-)

In my researches on hardwood, I learned a new word chatoyance. This is the way hardwoods change in colour with the incident angle of light, so you get a ripple effect that moves on the surface as you move your relative position. This gives a 3D effect with two vantage points i.e. one from each eye. Need I mention that chatoyance is desirable? The derivation makes one feel dumb for not spotting it. Chatoyance = chat + oeil + ance = cat + eye + ance as in the mineral cat's eye which exhibits the same phenomenon from the world of physics.  :-)

3⁄4" Cuban Mahogany

Having friends banned from visiting me at the castle, has made me realise that I need to take little trips into the world for mental health.

So on Friday, I went on a few errands. Whilst in Montrose, I made a short detour to Steptoe's Yard, which is less a reclaim yard, than a descent into Dante's Inferno. :-)

Much of the stock is unsellable or broken or decomposed, but then there is a curious masochistic pleasure and sense of adventure in trying to find something one could use - saving the planet and perhaps saving some pennies in the process.

It is an object lesson in really looking. After 30 minutes, I was in despair: the stock had aged; there had been little replenishent; and obviously the best stuff had been cherry-picked some time ago. 

Suddenly, bingo - I spotted a large cardboard box full of vintage gentlemen's hairbrushes. I had misplaced my existing vintage ones and my hair was in consequence badly in need of taming. A little rummage, and I found a pair, and indeed a pair almost identical in design to the misplaced ones. :-)

I was walking outside, in the rain, and saw an old silvered bit of wood. Much of the wood left outside at Taylors is clearly the worse for the exposure to the weather, but this looked remarkably untarnished and instinctively I tapped it. What came back was the sharp echo of hardwood! Could this possibly be Cuban Mahogany?

slab of wood from Steptoe's

I was looking for Cuban mahogany to repair the "meal shelves" at the castle i.e. flaps of wood on hinges on corridor walls outside bedrooms. You could raise these flaps to the horizonal, support them with a built-in bracket, and then use them for breakfast plates etc. The meal shelves are still largely intact at the castle, except that the flaps themselves have been taken as souvenirs. The original 1858 plans show that these were manufactured from 3/4" Cuban Mahogany.

meal shelf at castle

I had bought two small antique Cuban Mahogany tables for a tenner. However, I hadn't yet brought myself to cut these up, and was hoping against hope to find a slab of Cuban Mahogany.

Anyhow, the assistant at Steptoe's let me have the brushes and the wood for a tenner. She had been expecting me to haggle her down but I knew I had a tenner in my wallet (they only take cash) and it wasn't worth aguing the toss. She said she would give me a discount on the next visit. 

She revealed that Mr. Steptoe had had a brain stem stoke but was recovering well, apparently such a stoke is only 15% survivable. I was unaware that he was unwell and it would explain the lack of new stock.

Anyhow, before I left the yard I was delighted to see Mr. Steptoe bustling about,  perhaps not quite as busy as usual, and we exchanged a few words. I thanked him for the wood saying that it was the answer to my prayers, and he replied "That's why we do it.". :-)

The slab of wood was probably the top of a chest of drawers. Normally, these are mahogany veneer only, so this would have been a top-end piece. I measured the slab and it was 3⁄4" + 2/32" thick.

I measured the wood at the back of the meal shelves and it is 3⁄4" + 1/32" thick. The match in thickness is almost perfect. I suspect they are both nominally 3⁄4" but would have been over-spec-ed for quality and sanding purposes.

In fact, the moulding on the edges is almost identical too.

I cleaned up the back of the meal-shelf and the top half of the reclaimed slab. It's perhaps wishful thinking, but I think I can see the sample purple cast of mahogany on both. I will ask my carpenter Gregor when he comes in on Monday.

Amazingly, it looks like the back of the shelf will clean up perfectly - the grey areas are splattered plastering primer that will just need elbow grease to remove. The slab, however, will need a little re-polish with a fine grit as it feels slightly rough.

half cleaned slab of wood from Steptoe's

cleaned meal-shelf at castle

Anyhow, there is a moral buried deep in this story. You may despair with what is in front of you but look again and look more carefully and you may find the exact solutions to the problems you have.

Pallet It

I have been sourcing tiles for the large female servants' sitting room in the basement of the castle. The tiles are for a small kitchen area and a small bathroom area as would have been found there originally. Most modern tiles would look totally out of place in a Victorian setting, and indeed most modern tiles are vile, so one's choice is surprisingly limited.

When I expressed my deep frustrations to Gavin and Gregor i.e. that the only nice tiles are on eBay and "collection only" in the deep South of England, they said "Why don't you just pick-up tiles from Topps Tiles in Dundee?". 

I do listen to advice, and sat down and worked my way systematically through the Topps Tiles website. Oh dear!  Things appear to have got worse rather than better. Topps Tiles used to feature natural stone (which I favour): now there are instead a lot of porcelain fake stone tiles which enforce clinical precision on a look that used to be supplied via a natural product. Nothing in the Topps Tiles catalogue inspired, despite the fact they are a local pick-up. Obviously, not everything was horrible but the price of what could have been acceptable was extortionate.

The tile market has a very strange pricing structure. Basic white tiles, etc, are OK in price, but move away to anything remotely desirable in the design department and the price sky-rockets. I am pretty certain this does not represent the underlying manufacturing costs. I suspect pricing in tile-rich cultures like Spain and Turkey is much more democratic, but we are in rip-off Britain.

Occasionally, I am tempted to indulge in Islamic tiles (think of the Arab Hall in Leighton House in Kensington) but import costs would overwhelm, and my rational mind has decided that tiles at Balintore are functional and not a design feature in themselves. And of course even with basic tiles, tiling patterns if desired, add no additional cost.

Anyhow, it suddenly dawned on me: "Why don't I just buy those eBay tiles in the South of England, and use a pallet company?". I had used pallet companies before. It is not cheap - perhaps £100 to move a pallet around the country, but it is much less expensive than a courier or driving down in person. Of course, you have to buy enough tiles to make it worthwhile - so that £100 becomes just a fraction of the overall cost.

I had been considering at one stage plain coloured mini-metro tiles which are good value for the basic colours: white, cobalt, emerald and cobalt. These come in at £15/m². I decided that a sexy peacock mini-metro would give an Islamic feel, but these come in at £60/m². When my mini metro tile samples arrived, I did like the peacock but not enough to justify the much higher cost.

For the basement area, Gavin would not accept a white tile and wanted a warmer "ivory" colour, and indeed a warmer colour altogether for the kitchen area. He has expensive tastes. :-) 

Anyhow, I located and ordered a couple of "remaindered lots" from the South of England: one a bone-coloured crackle-glazed mini metro (for the bathroom) and the other a glaced terracotta tile with natural colour variations (for the kitchen).

Thankfully both sellers could supply their own pallet and the pick-ups and drop-offs went like a dream.  The terracotta arrived today, and the bone arrived yesterday. Thankfully, my builders approve - though they tutted at the brighter orange teracotta tiles. :-) 

The choice of colours was really constrained by the mini kitchen. We have used second hand oak doors and oak drawer fronts and broken third-hand granite worktops. With two natural textures already, the tiles simply could not be patterened, and could only be plain coloured or another very subtle natural texture. The warmth of the colour of these variagated terracotta tiles jumped out at me from the eBay listing, and I decided to just go for it. And of course, a natural terracotta product is very much what could have been used in a Victorian servant area.

I manage to find out the manufacturer of the teracotta tile (Equipe in Finueroles, Spain) and the bone tile (Adex in Onda, Spain not far away). I got some more samples of the Equipe tiles in different colours as I thought the darker teracotta, might need a lighter colour on top. Gregor and Gavin loved the Artisan Gold which is even darker, and this is after complaining they they did want too dark a tile! :-) Indeed, the Artisan Gold toned surprisingly well with the oak, but is probably too dark overall. The Atisan and Country labels turned out to be a textural variation not a colour variation - the Artisan tile is much more roughly shaped and textured.

However, while holding the teracotta tiles in place today, we all concluded they didn't need a border, or to be topped off by other tiles as they were sufficiently "stand alone". Sometimes, simplicity is the result of complex thinking. :-)

The bone tiles were left over from a client with high end tastes - these retail at over £100/m² ! It's always good to know that a bargain is even better than one thought.

I am struck by how apparently random the design decisions at Balintore are, and yet on the other hand, with the materials available things could only really have gone one way. Everything has been second hand and budget. It's particularly nice to work with Gavin and Gregor as they are putting in the hard work, so they have a vested interest in not doing anything unspeakably horrible. :-)

The terracotta tiles will go on the wall behind the bespoke kitchen units built by Gregor. So you can see the design constraints are the oak doors (eBay) and the granite countertop (Facebook Marketplace).