Common Law of Business Balance...

[Toby Newell]

"There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price alone are that person's lawful prey. It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money – that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot – it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better"

Shame the person who sent me this email obviously is not a fan of Ruskin. He does happen to own some of Manchesters' finest listed buildings, one wonders how that was allowed to happen. Ho hum. In another life.




And btw, I took my time to try and be as helpful as possible but told him a competent job using the correct reclaimed timber could only be achieved for around £60 to £80K. I am continually surprised these people do not appear to know, or care to find out how much they should be paying, I cannot help but think he is a very greedy man as he obviously is no fool. I just hope it isn't in one of his listed buildings and before anyone says anything, yes, sadly that does happen, rules get bent the more money you invest and this person would have appeared to spent several millions, how he can restore listed buildings with such woeful due diligence and oversight is beyond me.

 

[88v8]

Glue onto concrete? How can that ever be right.

The problem, leaving aside those who just don't care, the problem with any major job is that one usually begins knowing nothing. One then decides on DIY or trade, but whether DIY or not, one has to learn how the job should be done. Otherwise how can one evaluate the methods and workmanship of the trade?
Apparently this chap has not learned that lesson.

Too often, as I've said before, I finish a job knowing how I should have done it. My garage is in some respects a good example. Mostly DIY, it will have absorbed c£35k and many months of my life, yet I have ignorantly incorporated errors, and while the builder was involved I ignorantly allowed him to do the same.

All the worse if a period building is involved as damage to historic fabric cannot always be undone.

And so frustrating for you as you must constantly compete with those who are prepared to bodge things and owners who neither know nor care.

Ivor

 

[Toby Newell]

My dismay is threefold Ivor. Firstly, selfishly, I think of the all the wonderful buildings I could and should working in and twenty years ago, would have been working in, I think of me actually making a viable living rather than holding on by my fingertips.

Secondly I think of the actual buildings themselves and how it is that they should be treated with such a lack of respect.

Thirdly is the futility of it all. As proven in this case, paying a little more in the first place would have cost the owner an extra £30 or £40K. As it stands he appears to have lost his original £30K and I would think another £30K in lost revenue every week the venue remains shut for remedial works PLUS another £60 to £80K for a more reputable company to correct the work. Seeing as the work would likely take 3 weeks to complete as new concrete or screed would need to be relaid and allowed to dry the 'cheap' job may end up costing him £30 + £90 + £80 = £200K. Plus, presumably, an ongoing legal battle and a mountain of extra stress which no one let alone a busy business and property magnate really needs.

He hasn't replied yet. Although someone from Manchester did spend 19minutes on my site according to GA yesterday. I won't hold my breath even for a thank you to my help and advice I sent him. Maybe it's pride.

Yes Ivor, I am thinking what was wrong with the original floor? I am thinking why was reclaimed pitch pine specified? Was it a listing requirement? And how can one buy reclaimed pitch pine, fit and finish it for £80sqm!!!

Glue onto concrete? The mind boggles. I told him nailed onto battens would reduce movement, be less fatiguing for staff and customers, would reduce moisture uptake from the slab and would facilitate easier part replacement of damaged high traffic areas in service. I told him that if for height considerations battens were not an option then loose tongues or biscuits, whilst an extra cost would of been a more secure method if gluing the boards. Finally, two coats. Lol. On a high traffic commercial area exposed to alcohol. Three or four coats.

Maybe that is why he hasn't replied. Maybe he doesn't like being told the obvious. Maybe seeing as his last refit cost £3.5M he thinks he knows it all. Maybe that's why I'm poor and he's rich. Only sometimes you get caught out.

My favourite bit is the recovery attempt. Where he poses the question whether he can put his crappy-obviously-not-reclaimed-pitch-pine banana impersonating boards replete with dried glue and cement screed through someones £150K industrial plane and reuse them.

That possibly beats the "the contractor didn't use cramps". I was quite polite in my email. I didn't ask him to explain, with visual aids if necessary, how exactly one applies floor cramps to a straight edged face glued board floor. Maybe some sort of Acrow prop arrangement?!!!

You have to laugh.

 

[Lime]

Welcome to the modern world.
Why are you surprised?
Virtually everything today is done with profit in mind and price is often the only factor, but that is not so new.
What is new is a total disregard for past skills, a complete inability to have any understanding or discernment of materials and methods of working, almost to the extent a pride is taken in the ignorance, and the desire for something new, quick and easy regardless of its appropriateness or longevity.
It is now ubiquitous.
The complaints about the floor specifically relate to the fact it only lasted 2 weeks before faults started to appear.
I suspect if they had appeared 2 years later the complaints would not have been made.
They would have just ripped up the floor and had another stuck down again, the cheaper the better.

You ask "why was reclaimed pitch pine specified"?
Can you think of any wood that would be cheaper?
I suggest the criteria was old building?... old bit of wood....perfect.

 

[Lime]

Tell him you will fill the cracks with chalk and glue to make the floor shabby chic and charge a fortune.

 

[Toby Newell]

Welcome to the modern world.
Why are you surprised?

Sadly I am well acquainted to the modern world. I am not surprised Lime. I was expressing dismay, not surprise. I experience what you espouse every day. Which is why I am dismayed enough to post it.

What is new is a total disregard for past skills, a complete inability to have any understanding or discernment of materials and methods of working

By new you obviously mean since the late 1980's when what you describe started happening after that particular recession. By new I suppose you mean since the new European project started to facilitate the mass migration of millions of low skilled, low waged operatives into more advanced economies as a cynical means of driving down wage inflation for the working masses who were getting all uppity and asking for living wages etc.? Mmm. I think the main effect after 1990 took a few years to filter through to my particular profession as there was a steeper learning curve, the first jobs to fill up were labouring, decorating, cleaning, catering, hospitality, the sex trade and the caring professions, child minders, nursery nurses etc. I think after say 1994-1996 everything pretty much hit rock bottom and has remained there ever since, even in quite sophisticated crafts.

So yes, new, as in the last 10 or 15 years. Welcome to the modern world!

Can you think of any wood that would be cheaper?

What than reclaimed pitch pine? Yes.

Pitch pine.

i.e. That is not actually reclaimed.
New pitch pine.
That is not correctly seasoned.
And has not pre shrunk over the last 100 years.
That is cut from faster growing species.
That has less dimensional stability.
That causes "bowing" to be "happening" and "gaps" to be "appearing" more readily than reclaimed timber.

Actually, FYI reclaimed pitch pine is quite expensive, cheaper timbers would include new pine both pitch and yellow, new oak in almost all its forms and many other woods. If you find any reclaimed original period pitch pine boards in decent thicknesses for the same price as new pine or oak boards please let me know and I will send a man up, with a large lorry. And resawn timbers don't count. They aren't floorboards, they are butchered beams and as such have residual stresses which contribute to banana aerobics. *thumbs up*

Apologies. I have sardonicitits. It's an affliction.

 

[plasticpigeon]

Ruskin was wrong. It is possible to pay a lot of money for something and still get an awful service.

 

[Flyfisher]

I agree. I understand Toby's basic point, and agree with it in principle, but the real problem for the inexperienced is how to judge what is a fair price for something, especially when the job is very specialised.

 

[LadyArowana]

I agree. I understand Toby's basic point, and agree with it in principle, but the real problem for the inexperienced is how to judge what is a fair price for something, especially when the job is very specialised.

If possible, I like to give people a small job to do first and then decide if they are nice to work with and do a good job. Of course it's difficult with building work!

 

[Toby Newell]

@Flyfisher. I agree, if you have never employed a floor fitter, a wood finisher or have not spent enough time researching how much timber flooring costs, for example then it is a real problem.

The lay person is not to know that the median price for such work has gone down 40% over the last 15 years but that material costs and overheads and the cost for adequately qualified labour obviously has not and that therefore the only way the price could have deflated would be that inferior materials and / or less materials are obviously being used and that obviously less skilled labour is being used and that this almost always results in a service that provides much poorer form and much less functionality and in some cases that the deficiency in functionality quickly becomes catastrophic.

I agree. But the person who contacted me spent £3.5M pounds last year on a refurbishment and owns over half a dozen other large venues, some of which are listed (including the £3.5M one) he, or his agents, presumably should know the difference between a cheap job and a decent one, it's very easy, employ an experienced architect and an experienced QS. I bet if I found out the name of the company who undertook the work and I looked at their website it would be quite easy to "spot the difference". I would not be at all surprised if a lay person had this problem and am not surprised this gentleman has had this problem. The point is, I SHOULD be surprised a man responsible for multi million pound refurbishments or his agents have not done due diligence to find out what the true cost of a job should be.

That is before you get your head round the fact that they have not bothered to check either the developer, architect, designer, surveyor or project manager the method employed, which would appear to be wrong. One has to assume that none of the several responsible professionals who undertake millions of pounds worth of work knew anything about the job they specified and paid for either before the works, during the works and immediately after the works, at no time did anyone question whether what the contractors were doing was correct. It is very, very hard for me to believe. Someone, somewhere was chancing it in order to save money.

@plasticpigeon apart from the fact that the quote is disputed and has only ever been attributed to Ruskin (although it follows his sentiments entirely) I think whomsoever wrote it did not actually imply that, you inferred it. There is nothing to say in the quote that you cannot pay too much for something and get a poor result, that is certainly true, only that in paying too little the chance of getting a poor result is much greater, almost 100% greater. I think the quote still holds. I think it would of been less elegant if Ruskin or whoever it was made the addendum "(but it is also possible to pay too much and receive a poor service)" I think that is something implied, although everyone reads thing differently.

Think of it like like second hand cars. It is perfectly possible to pay top money for a second hand car and have it break down, it is just a common law of business and economics that if you buy a much cheaper second hand car it is much more likely to break down! In general, paying a little more for a second hand car might prove, on average, to be economically a better bet as the risk of catastrophic failure (necessitating the purchase of a new second hand car in a addition to the unrepairable one) is less.

Case in point. I drove to Cheshire to pick up my Mercedes Sprinter which I bought, secondhand, for £7,000. A good friend and colleague of mine bought a similar aged Fiat Ducato from Liverpool at the same time for £2,500. It seized on the way back to London, just outside the M25. He had it towed, towed, repaired and sold it at over a £3,000 loss. He then bought a brand new Citroen relay, spent £17,000 and has so far spent more than I have on repairs for a van that is now worth less. The moral of the story is, don't buy cheap and do due diligence. A second hand Mercedes Sprinter is better than a second hand Fiat or a brand new Citroen paying more is no guarantee. Lay people may not know this but they can find out, I did! and I'm not a mechanic. It's called research.

Obviously the only single important thing that truly matter when employing someone is how honest they are. If they are honest they will tell you what they can and cannot do and such people if they occasionally overstretch themselves and make mistakes will endeavour to rectify them either themselves or via a third party.

Then all the potential client would have to do is due diligence to ascertain whether the person they wish to employ has the requisite skills and experience. As it is the biggest concern is whether the contractor is being honest a question which most people do not even bother to ask because they have not yet worked out that they need to.

It is incredibly rare that I come across genuinely qualified and experienced and well-meaning contractors that accidentally screw up, why would I? They are obviously adequately insured and clear up their own mess, what I do see, every week (my website is a magnet for people with problems as it appears highly in the "how to do something correctly" category) is dishonest, disingenuous, lazy, greedy contractors who lie to their customers.

I would be much more philosophical if my livelihood was being destroyed by an influx and high quality, honest, competing craftsmen, that's just the way the world works, there is nothing wrong with a range of prices and levels of quality, that is how it should be. What upsets me greatly is that this disparity in quality is not transparent I bet if you looked at the above contractors website it would say things like "customer service is our number one priority" "highly trained craftsmen" and give a load of bogus testimonials. Put "floor sanding" into google and I can tell you who owns and runs the companies on the first two pages, I can also tell you that most of them are liars, cheats and that I have written court letters for customers cheated by them. That is what is upsetting. The fact that dishonesty, lying and cheating is the new baseline and I look like some sort of freak just because I try and do a good job. Before I stopped sub contracting I had site managers and architects on their walkie talkies ordering the security staff not to "let this man out of the building"!!! because I actually knew what I was doing.

That isn't really flattering, that's dismaying. Being honest and competent should be the bare minimum requirement for ANYONE in ANY profession. The fact that I artificially look good and often astound people for actually doing what I say and being reasonably competent at what I do doesn't fill me with pride, rather it fills me with sadness. Many of the companies I worked for have closed in the last 12 years, many of my colleagues, most in fact, work part time and seek alternative employment to make ends meet. I am constantly on the brink of packing it in or at least selling my technical side of the business and going back to part time polishing.

What then? Who are people going to call in the future? Everyone who actually cares will have gone. Catastrophic failures like the one above won't just be common they will be expected. Something that is "acceptable" will become the new gold standard. It's just all pretty sad. I am aware, of course, that this is happening not just in my own small field but in most other building trades and in the wider world, many people with any passion and dignity in medicine, the teaching and caring professions are finding it very difficult to cope. I think I need a Martini.

 

[88v8]

Which all makes it rather difficult for anyone trying to maintain or restore a period house, or make a decent living in the related trades.

A quarter mile from me across the fields is a C17 GII house sold a couple of years ago to a local GP where we can see a constant stream of builders, the sort of builders who have cherry pickers and hi-viz jackets. There are some there atm. They appear to be doing something to the chimney and gable. Oddly, we never see any LBC applications in the local newsletter.
I keep meaning to wander over and see what they've been doing, perhaps he's found some decent local people we could use. But does he, the GP, know what's what. Or is he using expensive bodgers. As did the PO here.

As Toby says, anyone now can write a decent website. And word of mouth is all very well provided the mouth knows what it's talking about.

Ivor

 

[TheRoost]

The email is very telling, probably typed at warp speed whilst doing something else, a jumble of other persons comments and opinions. If the author can't be bothered to write properly and check spelling, what real interest can they have in the subject matter?

I imagine Manchester Council like its neighbouring councils, are quite lax when it comes to planning enforcement of listed buildings, if business/jobs/housing is involved then these take priority allowing the owners get away with murder. Retrospective applications get passed if the correct box ticking gets done and it vaguely looks like respect for the building.

Indeed there is a lot of re-sawn so called pitch pine floorboards made from joists etc. on ebay and the like. I'd never thought about the stresses/warping before, I'd always been put off by the heavy machine saw marks/blade chatter that these boards have on the faces going across the grain, they stain/varnish them like that and advertise them as a finished board, they look awful and I doubt really old floorboards ever had saw marks like that.

 

[Toby Newell]

@Ivor

I agree, very difficult, there is a saying bulls**t baffles brains, see it all the time, clever people, captains of industry, it doesn't matter, they get duped, when I ask them for the website I can see after two minutes that the whole thing is fake. Case in point, what do you make of these honest and law abiding persons?

http://www.generations.co.uk

Very Ken burns, looks good right? Hand distressed and French polished wide board oak for £100sqm, too cheap to be true right? Well, only if you know that decent European wide board oak starts at around £55inc, only if you know that hand distressing like that with trained craftsmen would push the retail up to around £150 to £200 minimum. Check out the "handmade section" there are two squirrel polishers mops in the background, looks like a no 16 or no 18 which are only handmade to order now, both cost well over £100 each, he appears to mix some burnt sienna pigment in something and appears to be applying plaster of Paris from an old enamelled milk jug!!! Look at the name, in small letters, 1841. The current Palace of Westminster dates from 1841, many people know that in their subconscious but don't know they know it! So 1841 invokes subliminal feelings of culture and authenticity, clever eh?

So how can you tell that he is a fake? He says he is 5th generation, beats me, I am 'only' fourth generation... the lack of words on his website.

What about the pictures? The gallery contains staged photographs in sets that are dressed and professionally lit, they would of cost him thousands from a professional photographer, but wait, he paid thousands but where are the high res images? Only a poor selection of soft focus Ken burns type drivel, would a person really pay thousands of pounds just to put a crappy out of focus low res image on their site? Of course not, the pictures are from catalogues obviously. And what about the floors in those pictures? They are mass produced in low wage economies, ok so thats not easy to spot for the lay person, but the pictures should be. They all have microbevels at the edges. Mass produced yet the website pretends their company actually produces them.

Have a look at the More Galleries, Project Galleries, just random library pictures of random places!!!

The videos show a workshop using techniques from my early Grandfathers days, yet who grain fills with plaster of Paris on a wood floor???? Ok, again, how is the lay person to know? But a clever person should be smelling something. A person who has actually gone into or contacted a few flooring shops for hand distressed wide board oak timber should have an idea of the median price.

Where is the address? Google it. Google maps it. Street view it. It appears to be an antique and house clearance dealers, again, the lay person may not know that these businesses are generally the most untrustworthy in the trade! But have a look at the interior of the parent company (5th generation and a simple couple of links shows generations are a sister company on their website) does it look like the interior of a high class traditional hand finished flooring emporium? And what are those boards there? They look suspiciously like cheaply stained micro bevelled oak and what is on top of the boards, it looks suspiciously like a factory brochure... take a look at the decor, the state of repair, the quality of the furniture, does this look and smell like the workshop in the generations website video?



It doesn't does it?

I can bet you my house that he offers two types of boards, one, a factory finished board distressed in Portugal or somewhere en masse finished with a pigmented oil or UV cure oil, two, a cheap engineered or solid oak plank that he stains in his workshop out back where they polish up their tat to sell. They never employ real polishers as antique and house clearance guys are as tight as they come, they are famous for it! No they probably have some sort of brushing machine and after brushing will apply a pigmented oil to order, this is clever as they can turn a £20 sqm mass produced piece of Chinese oak into a £80 or £100 sqm piece of 'handmade' flooring via the employment of a 'craftsman' sufficiently skilled to be able to A. hold onto a power tool and B. use a rag to wipe on and off. These are the 'fifth generation craftsmen' who they likely employ in their little behind the shop workshop. Ex agricultural workers, mini cab drivers and labourers on minimum type wages.

Am I scared of being sued? Not really. I would ask to visit their workshops. Case closed.

There are dozens more I could elucidate. Whilst one must remember that the day the idea of trading sea shells or beads for goods was 'invented' someone, somewhere was working out the first scam! That's just human nature. Throughout history there have been scams, it is just that these days the scams are far more widespread and much, much more sophisticated in their marketing, they have to be as the general population is much more educated, almost all of us can read and write. The scams now are so widespread and pervasive that people are wary of genuine websites like mine, they look, 'different'. Safer to go with the crowd and back to the 'normal' looking website which promises 'best quality at lowest prices!' in comparison it appears that I am trying to dupe and overcharge. That's where we are today. Marketing and lies. If my potential customers were Bill Hicks clones I would be minted.

Thats just one example and the person who contacted me about fitting these floors? He used to be the number two at wonga dot com, so presumably he has a few pennies and knows a thing or two about business AND misleading advertising!!! But nope, he thought it all looked authentic. So I agree, it appears to be difficult, for some reason, but not for me, I can smell them a mile away.

@TheRoost

I think the gentleman was obviously busy and appeared stressed, I understand that, I can imagine him being called to site, getting angry and upset, doing a quick web search for 'how to sand floors, how to repair floors, how to stain floors' etc and stumbling across my website. I did reply, twice, with my summation of the possible causes and possible remedies, with costs, I tried to convey empathy and told him if he required any further assistance or a full site survey not to hesitate, I also sent him a text to confirm receipt of the emails, he did not bother to reply. That is quite a high level of ignorance, a 'thanks for that, very helpful' or just 'thanks' would of been sufficient.

Planning? Let me tell you from having worked at the Palace of Westminster, The British Museum, The Law Society and a hundred other famous landmark listed buildings it all comes down to money and who you know. That is not to say that sometimes that listing rules are not enforced, of course they are, but it's a front, that's all, like environmental concerns, mainly are a front for producers to produce and sell more, I have watched English Heritage for example approve ridiculously damaging practices to important buildings. It really depends on the politics and the knowledge of the enforcing officers which appears to be fairly low. The only time I have seen things being done correctly (or an attempt at such) is when the Architect is knowledgeable, passionate and open minded and can connect with the passion and intellect of the associated craft trades to attempt to do the right thing. Even then there is a constant fight between the architect and main contractor not to cut corners. There are certainly people out there who care but the whole system is so heavily rigged towards profit it is very hard for them to make a difference.

Yes. Resawn stuff, I don't like it. Sometimes it's okay, sometimes it isn't. Many old beams were not kiln dried and fitted into service under considerable loads in the green or partially green state, thus they seasoned under particular stresses and some wood fibres contracted and dried into shape in a particular way, a bit like when you wake up in the morning and your hair (if you still have any) is in a funny snap, it is very hard to straighten it out without washing it! What can happen with resawn timber is that everything is fine when dry but when the moisture level creeps up, for example when using a water based adhesive or applying a water based lacquer and / or absorbing moisture from a concrete slab, those fibres can swell up and try and follow the orientation of the way they seasoned, a sort of memory.

It does not happen all the time, but it can happen, so for that reason I do not fit resawn timber and do not advise it, because laying floors is tricky enough! Without coming back two weeks later to see 4000 sqft of timber doing an impression of a banana plantation, which in the OP email instance would be an £80K bad hair day. My hair is wayward enough on its own thank you very much so one the slight chance it might bankrupt me I don't use resawn timber.

In the interest of balance apparently, the job I recently saw in Cumbria, which had been under 3 inches of water for 14 hours was apparently reclaimed reason timber, fitted with incorrect fixings and after 'crowning' 12 to 18 inches in the middle, it went back down and appears remarkably ok. I stress apparently as I suspect the person who supplied and laid it was maybe not totally honest.

 

[plasticpigeon]

Hello Toby, in this background picture aren't they factory machined tongue and groove boards stcked up?

http://www.generations.co.uk/handmade.html

 

[plasticpigeon]

Talking of grain filling, I have an old wind out extendable dining table, and I would like to refinish the top of it as it has been varnished over with some kind of polyeurethane or similar. The centre section is nice and untouched but the 2 outer sections are darker and have a poor surface finish. The table is oak and the colour quite pale for old furniture, and it seems to have been grain filled with something black. Do you know what was used or what I should use for grain filling if I was to refinish in the future please.

 

[Lime]

it's a front, that's all, like environmental concerns, mainly are a front for producers to produce and sell more

Something on which we agree.

 

[Flyfisher]

A 'front' in what sense? One invented primarily to generate business or one that businesses exploit to generate business?

The latter is surely entirely understandable (free-market, entrepreneurial capitalism and all that) but it doesn't necessarily infer the former.

 

[plasticpigeon]

What about green deal, or whatever the governments green initiative is? It seems that certain work such as having a new boiler, cavity wall insulation or loft insulation is subsidised by the government, if certain contractors do the work. i was interested in getting loft insulation fitted. However I realised I would still have to pay more than if I did it myself. I assume that company would also get money from the government as well as from the recipient of the work, sounds like a front to me. I am certain that thay would have broken my ceiling as I only have 3" joiusts up there. Another company were suggesting putting insulation boarding and render on the outside of my mum's Edwardian red brick house. Something that would look awful and i believe would not be good for the building. The cost which was supposed to be subsidised was still thousands if not 10s of thousands. She nearly went for it as she doesn't give any credit to anything I say and likes to be seen to be socially responsible, but I think even she realised that it was too much money thankfully, as even if her heating bills reduced to 0 she probably wouldn't recoup the expenditure. I have seen situations like this at work too.

 

[TheRoost]

@Ivor



http://www.generations.co.uk

Very Ken burns, looks good right? Hand distressed and French polished wide board oak for £100sqm, too cheap to be true right? Well, only if you know that decent European wide board oak starts at around £55inc, only if you know that hand distressing like that with trained craftsmen would push the retail up to around £150 to £200 minimum. Check out the "handmade section" there are two squirrel polishers mops in the background, looks like a no 16 or no 18 which are only handmade to order now, both cost well over £100 each, he appears to mix some burnt sienna pigment in something and appears to be applying plaster of Paris from an old enamelled milk jug!!! Look at the name, in small letters, 1841. The current Palace of Westminster dates from 1841, many people know that in their subconscious but don't know they know it! So 1841 invokes subliminal feelings of culture and authenticity, clever eh?

Eurgh. It just looks like mass produced stuff to me, too straight, too flat, as you say the bevel edges, the finish looks plasticky, it doesn't appeal at all. But lots of people will like it and be duped by it. It reminds me of seeing 'hand scraped' floorboards in B&Q a few years back for £60/m2 (can't remember how wide) they usually end up in a modern house with flat brilliant white walls and chrome furniture

What are your thoughts on Oak furnitureland Toby? same sort of clever marketing aimed at the masses and oak from the far east?

 

[Toby Newell]

Hello Toby, in this background picture aren't they factory machined tongue and groove boards stcked up?

http://www.generations.co.uk/handmade.html

Indeed, the microbevel is the give away. Notice how the sepia tone and the over sharpened image increases the ruggedness of the grain and makes everything look more 'natural' clever eh? As does the curls from the hand plane suggesting the factory machined boards are hand finished? And the 1940's chisel handle?

Very clever. All suggestive.