Kuala Selangor · Solid timber only · No veneer, no MDF, no exceptions
We work in solid Malaysian hardwood — reclaimed where we can find it, certified where we cannot. Mortise and tenon, drawbored and pinned, finished in oil. Nothing here is glued to a board of chipboard and called timber.
Count the ringsA tree in this climate does not stop growing in winter, because there is no winter. What it responds to is water — a long dry spell lays down a narrow, dense band, and a wet year lays down a wide one. Read across a chengal end grain and you are reading fifty or sixty years of Selangor weather, in order.
Which is worth saying because it explains the price. A board 300 mm wide had to come from a tree that took most of a human lifetime to get there, and once we cut it up there is no more of it.
1968
Ø 18 mm · pith
The seedling. Somewhere near Sungai Buloh, on land that is now a housing estate.
Scroll — one ring a year
Germinated 1968, felled 2026 under a salvage permit after a road widening. Final diameter 612 mm, of which 84 mm is sapwood and the rest is the dark, dense heartwood we can actually use. The narrow bands at 1976, 1983, 1997 and 2015 are dry years; the wide run through the late eighties is not.
02 / Conversion
Same log, three ways of sawing it. The difference is not aesthetic — it is how much the finished board will move when the air conditioning goes off for a week, and how much of the log you throw away to get there.
The cheapest and fastest way through a log, and the reason most furniture cups. The wide cathedral figure everyone recognises is a flat-sawn board, and so is the gap that opens along your table top in March.
03 / Timber
Every batch carries a source. Reclaimed means it was a beam, a bridge or a jetty first, and we will tell you which. Certified means a chain-of-custody document you may read before you order.
| Species | Density | Durability | Movement | Where ours comes from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chengal | 915 kg/m³ | Class 1 | Small | Reclaimed jetty and kampung house beams; occasional salvage permit |
| Merbau | 830 kg/m³ | Class 1 | Small | Certified plantation, Sarawak. We will not buy it uncertified |
| Balau | 880 kg/m³ | Class 1 | Medium | Certified, mostly for outdoor work and decking |
| Nyatoh | 690 kg/m³ | Class 3 | Medium | Certified. Interior only — it will not survive a wet garden |
| Kiln-dried to | 10–12% MC | Measured on arrival and again the day before we cut. Written on the invoice | ||
We do not stock ramin, and we will decline a commission that requires it. It is listed under CITES Appendix II and the paperwork is too easy to fake for us to be comfortable relying on it.
04 / Joints
The tenon's peg hole is bored 1.5 mm closer to the shoulder than the mortise's. Driving the peg pulls the joint permanently tight — no clamps, no reliance on glue, and it stays closed for a century. Every table base and every door here.
Cut by hand for drawers and carcase corners. Slower than a machined joint by about forty minutes a corner, and the only joint that gets stronger the harder you pull the wrong way.
Machined, for panel work and anything that will never see load. We use it where it is honest to use it and we will tell you where we have — it is on the drawing.
Pocket screws in anything structural, biscuits in a table top, or a butt joint hidden under a moulding. If a joint would not survive being taken apart and inspected, it does not go in.
05 / Lead times & prices
Two benches, four hands, and timber that has to acclimatise in our shed for six weeks before anyone touches it. Prices are for chengal or merbau; nyatoh takes about 20% off.
| Piece | From | Lead time | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dining table, 2.4 m | RM 18,500 | 14 weeks | Solid top, breadboard ends, drawbored base. Seats eight properly |
| Entrance door & frame | RM 9,800 | 10 weeks | Chengal, 45 mm, rebated frame, brass or stainless ironmongery |
| Staircase, straight flight | RM 42,000 | 18 weeks | Housed strings, wedged treads, includes site fitting |
| Kitchen, per linear metre | RM 6,400 | 16 weeks | Solid frames and drawer boxes. Stone and appliances by others |
| Louvre screen, per m² | RM 2,900 | 8 weeks | Fixed or adjustable. The most-asked-for thing we make |
| Deposit | 40% | On order | Balance on delivery. Timber is bought the week you confirm |
06 / Asked often
It will move — every solid timber top does, seasonally, across the grain. Ours are built to move: buttons rather than screws, breadboard ends slotted not glued, no fixed rail across the grain. A crack is a design failure, not a timber failure, and if one appears in something we made we come and fix it.
Colour, approximately, with oil and time. Grain, no — and you would not want us to. Two chengal boards from different logs will never look alike, and forcing them to with stain is how you get furniture that looks like a photograph of furniture.
Wipe with a damp cloth. Re-oil once a year with what we give you, which takes about twenty minutes for a table. No polish, no wax, nothing from a supermarket aerosol.
Anywhere in the peninsula, at cost. Sabah and Sarawak by sea freight, which we will arrange and which adds about five weeks.
07 / The shed
Photographs are useless for this. The rack has about forty boards on it at any time and the only way to choose one is to stand in front of them. Bring your dimensions and an hour.
Lot 1198, Jalan Bukit Belimbing
45000 Kuala Selangor, Selangor
Tue–Sat, 09:00–17:00
Call before you drive out
Machines stop for visitors