Reclaimed teak: wood with a past life

When we open a shipment and lift out a piece of reclaimed teak, the first thing we do is look at it closely. Not to hunt for flaws, but to read what it carries. A hole here, a dark stain there, a thin crack running along the grain. All of that was there long before we arrived. And that is exactly what we love.

Where this wood comes from

The teak we work with in Bali does not come from a freshly felled tree. It comes from places that already did their job: beams from old houses, planks from boats, the frames of buildings being pulled down or rebuilt. In Bali and across other Indonesian islands there is a long tradition of rescuing this wood before it ends up as firewood or waste.

The craftspeople we work with gather it, clean it, and go over every piece. Some are set aside because the wood is too far gone on the inside. The ones that pass that first check become the starting point for something new. Not anonymous raw material, but wood with a known history.

What the holes tell you

There is one kind of mark that always gets people talking: the small, round holes that show up on the surface. Plenty of customers ask us whether that is a problem. It is not. They are the traces of little insects that lived in the wood a long time ago, back when it was still part of a beam or the hull of a boat. The craftsperson checks that there is no recent activity and that the wood is sound inside. If it is healthy, those holes stay.

The same goes for the shifts in colour. Teak ages unevenly depending on the light it caught, the damp around it, or the varnish someone brushed on decades ago. That gives you pieces with tones running from golden brown to silvery grey, sometimes on the same board. We do not correct it. To us it feels like the most honest thing to do.

Why we do not drop the price of the wood

Now and then someone tells us reclaimed teak ought to be cheaper because it has already been used. We understand the logic, but we do not share it. Sorting, moving, cleaning and working this wood takes more time than it does with new timber. The craftspeople need to know the material well to tell what is worth keeping and what is not. That judgement has a value we are not going to haggle away.

We also do not want a low price to be the reason someone buys. If a person picks up a piece of reclaimed teak only because it is cheap, chances are they will not love it much once they notice the marks. We would rather the buyer already knows what is coming: an imperfect, one-of-a-kind piece they will not find anywhere else.

Drying time, that patient enemy

One of the hardest parts of our work is waiting. Reclaimed teak tends to carry very different levels of moisture depending on where it came from. Before we can work it, we have to let it settle, and that takes weeks. Skip that step and the wood moves after it is finished: it opens, it warps, it loses its shape.

We have had shipments where a piece arrived damper than expected and we had to put the brakes on. It is never nice to tell someone who has been waiting a while for their order. But it is what has to happen. Wood does not care about delivery dates, and we have learned not to pick a fight with that.

How to spot a good piece

When people ask us how to tell whether a piece of reclaimed teak is any good, we always say the same thing: look at the grain. In quality teak the lines are tight and even, even when the colour varies. A very open or irregular grain can mean the tree grew too fast, which makes the wood less dense and less hard-wearing.

Then there is the feel. Teak has a light natural oil that makes it smooth under your hand, even with no treatment at all. That does not fade over the years. If a piece has it, that is a good sign. If it feels completely dry and porous, it is worth a closer look. These are small things you pick up over time, trip by trip.

If you would like to see which teak pieces we have right now, come by the shop whenever you like. And if you are curious about how we come to find all of this, in Our Journey we tell you a bit more about how the road from Bali to here actually works.