Wide plank wood flooring, something we’re well renowned for at Coppice & Crown. Our business is founded on transparency and guaranteed quality, reflected in the systems put in place and the individuals involved. There is no limit to the time and accuracy at which the kiln drying process is carried out by Tom Bedford, owner of Coppice & Crown. Tom’s high level of personal interest in the process maintains the quality of our extra wide plank wood flooring that we are famous for.
Our wide plank flooring comes in widths up to 300mm, with widths available on request.
Our Devon wood floors are first slowly seasoned, taking 12-18 months air drying prior to entering the kiln. A slow drying process is important for all of our products but is crucial for our extra wide plank wood flooring. Having seasoned the boards, they are then dried in our renewable energy kiln until the perfect moisture content has been reached.
The kiln is run for 10-14 days. Checking the kiln statistics twice a day in these final stages ensures the extra wide plank wood flooring dries evenly. The kilning cycle is monitored closely with software systems in place to accurately determine the humidity and ventilation levels throughout the cycle. To record the timber’s moisture content, we take a sample population of boards from all areas of the kiln. We use a ‘pin type’ moisture metre, a small device with two electrodes which measures the moisture content of the timber using electronic resistance. As water conducts electricity, but wood doesn’t, the metre determines a percentage resistance to the electric current being emitted. The more resistance there is, the dryer the timber. The correct moisture content for our wide plank wood flooring at this stage is between 10-11%.
The ability to accurately measure the moisture content of the boards is critical for us to craft our wood flooring here in Devon, as well as our other joinery timber. When our Devon wood floors are laid in your home, your boards will be at 11%, which is the relative moisture content for the average home the UK. Timber is a hygroscopic material, meaning it has the ability to hold onto, through absorption, the water molecules in the air. Kiln drying the timber brings it down to household moisture levels. Once kiln dried, we keep the flooring in our climate controlled shed, which controls both humidity and temperature. We always specify that all building works and screeds etc are completely dry before laying our flooring, so that it can be delivered from one typical house humidity level at the workshop, to another in your home. Our handy flooring checklist that we send you before your flooring arrives help with all these bits.
Our timber storage shed has been nominated for The Wood Awards 2022. It is the largest UK grown glulam structure in the UK and acts as a building case study for both Exeter University and UWE, Bristol.
Having moisture tested enough boards, and being satisfied with the results, we set about removing the boards in their packs. Each pack consists of boards of the same thickness, length, species and source woodland. We use a tagging system on the packs which enables us to have complete transparency determining where each board has come from and the story behind our Devon wood floors. We’re also Grown in Britain certified. We roll out the stacks of timber along rails and unload the boards, ready for the next process. We then load the kiln with air dried stock ready for the process to be repeated.
We are devoted to maintaining a sustainable process at the timber yard. All the energy that runs the kiln is from renewable energy sources. The kiln uses heat produced from our on-site biomass boiler, which uses our waste wood chip from the sawing process. To achieve an even spread of heat and ventilation throughout the kiln, we use fans which are run from electricity produced from our on-site solar farm.
Visit the process page to view our video describing our sustainable processes.
You are more than welcome to come and visit our site where we can explain the kilning process in detail and show you some samples of our wide plank wood flooring in our showroom.
