We often get asked for extra photos of our teak benches so we have decided to go one step further and will soon be uploading videos of our all our teak garden benches.
We are still testing and learning how to use the new video equipment but if you need a video of any particular item do not hesitate to contact us!
No more will you have to precariously balance your pint of lager on the arm of your bench,!
Teak4less are introducing a range of new benches with specially made extra wide arms that will be the ideal resting place for a glass of wine or pint of your favourite drink, this garden bench is a sample from our 2011 range of teak garden benches. It measures 150cm wide and has the new wide flat arms priced and is priced at £169.99
Please email or call us if you would like to purchase, we only have one of these available and will not have any more stock of this particular model until winter 2010 at the earliest.
We have just had some “peanut” shaped heavy duty teak chairs arrive, these are not something we normally stock but were offered to us by a bankrupt competitor. They are very nice chairs but are classed as B grades as they have some slight imperfections in the wood. The chairs normally retail at around £200 each but as these are clearance and we need to sell them fast to make way for new stock that is arriving they will be £99 each or two for £150. We can also offer 6 peanut chairs and a 1.8 metre oval table (extends from 1.2) for £599.
As with all of our items you are welcome to make an appointment to view them at our warehouse so you can pick and choose which ever ones you want.
Just arrived at Teak4less HQ is this 150cm wide teak bench with special flat topped arms, these are perfect for resting pints of beer or the odd glass of wine while you enjoy the beautiful weather that we are currently enjoying in the UK. We only have one available so if you are interested please be quick as its priced at only £164.99, as with all our garden benches it will be delivered fully assembled as shown in the photo.
You can find our full range of teak garden furniture or teak garden benches by visting our website www.teak4less.co.uk
SORRY! Sold Out in 48 hours!
Please check our blog often for one off special benches as we have more to come.
One question we get asked time and time again about our teak furniture is “do you have those in stock?”
We try to hold stock of all of our items through out the year and we will never take payment for an item unless we have it in our UK warehouse. We took the photo in our warehouse yesterday so that we could prove to a new customer that we had lots of teak lutyens benches in stock as they had ordered from another supplier who had kept them hanging on and waiting for many months. The photo clearly shows we have too many to count!
We source all of our teak garden furniture from Indonesia and the wood it is made from is supplied through the Indonesian government owned company Perum Perhutani or just “Perhutani” as it is sometimes known. Perhutani employs around 30,000 people to help control the 2,500,000 hectares of wood plantations on the island of Java. The plantations were originally setup in the 1800’s when Indonesia was known as the Dutch East Indies and specifically when under the control of the Dutch Governor General Daendels who was sent to Java to rid the island of the English army.
The photo shows a relativly new perhutani teak plantation with row after row of new teak saplings planted after the previous crop was cut down. The trees can always easily be recognised by the very large green leaves that grow even when the tree is still very small . I have seen several websites claiming that the local population use the leaves as sandpaper and I have asked literally hundreds of Indonesians about this so called tradition. Every person has given one of two reactions, either a sly smile and snigger or a very loud bout of what can only be described as belly laughter (where the person laughs so loud the whole body shakes and wobbles!). It does sound quaint but I am afraid to say I have to spoil the myth and tell you that Indonesians get their sandpaper from the same place they buy their electric sanders, the local DIY store!
Some retailers especially the smaller online e-commerce sites seem to make a huge song and dance about the MC levels of there furniture, although we agree that its important for the furniture to be kiln dried its extremely rare for teak garden furniture to be made from wood that has not been thoroughly dried before being manufactured.
To check the moisture content level (known as MC%) of wood you can buy a moisture content meter from a local electronics store but these are prone to be inaccurate and will often under read the actual MC% of the wood. There is only one reliable method of measuring the moisture content of the wood and that is with a calibrated moisture content meter, unfortunately these are fairly expensive and out of the reach of the general public. The ones that are used by our own teak4less quality control staff cost over £300 each and are have to be regularly recalibrated to ensure they are accurate, they also have to be used with a temperature probe because the ambient temperature will always affect the MC% reading.We us two different types of moisture meter one that rests on the surface of the wood and one fitted with sharp prongs that are pushed in to the wood (shown in the above photo).
All of our own furniture is dried to a moisture content of around 12%, although we have seen websites claiming to have furniture that is dried to 8% this is highly unlikely to be true, what is more likely is that they are using inaccurate measuring equipment. We recently tested a teak chair that had been used inside a building for 15 to 20 years so it was as dry as it could possibly be, it still read 11.5% on our Moisture Content meter!
When you are looking to buy a good quality garden bench you should always look for dowel construction, the bench shown in the photo is constructed with metal bolts. Garden benches constructed with metal bolts are prone to wobble and eventually break. The reason why they normally break is the bolts holding the joints together rust and eventually corrode to the point where they are very weak and as soon as someone either sits or puts pressure on the joint the bolt snaps. Unfortunately when the joint breaks the bolt is left inside the wood and is impossible to remove normally making the bench irreparable.
Teak4less never sell benches with bolted joints we will only ever sell teak garden benches made with traditional dowelled mortise and tenon joints.
We have just had a new coffee table arrive today that is perfect for using with our teak benches. Priced at £79.99, the dimensions are H50cm x L100cm x D50cm, this item is not yet available to buy on our website but should you wish to purchase now please don’ t hesitate to call or email.
We will soon be updating our website to reflect our new delivery zones, we have the green coloured zone 1 and the blue coloured zone 2. We now offer a fixed delivery price that is dependent on your postcode for any number of teak table sets or teak benches to anyone located in the green zone. For example if you purchase one Teak table set with 8 chairs and 3 teak benches and you are located in the postcode area “CM12 3AB all of these items will be delivered to you assembled for one charge of only £19.99.
If you are located in the blue zone we unfortunately can not deliver a teak table set to you as they are too heavy and bulky to be sent with out specialised delivery service. We can however deliver any teak garden bench to you either assembled or flat packed, this means that we can now offer a delivery service for all of our teak garden benches to anyone in Scotland something we have previously been unable to do.
If you have any questions about our delivery charges please don’t hesitate to contact us or visit our delivery information page.
This is a photo of one of our own Lutyens Teak Benches, its approximately 2 years old and has been left outside in a normal garden all year round. It has had no plastic cover on it, no teak oil, wood preservative or varnish applied to it and has just been left to age naturally to a beautiful silver grey. Contrary to popular belief you do not need to spend a fortune on teak oil and other chemical treatments to maintain you teak garden furniture. The easiest option and the best (in our opinion) is to leave your bench to weather naturally washing it off twice a year with some soapy water and a brush. If you want to see what the bench looks like when it was new, follow this link: Lutyens Teak bench.
We have just had a 150cm heavy duty curve top bench arrive with our latest stock delivery, this bench will retail at £324.99 and will compliment are existing 150cm Heavy Duty Teak Bench and our 180cm Heavy Duty Teak Bench. This bench is made with 8cm legs with flat top arms and extra seat supports under the right and left side of the bench.
We never sell products when we are not 100% confident in the quality, unfortunately reclining chairs are prone to break and fail so we never sell them. Each red circle shows the location of a metal component, in this particular chair there are 16 individual metal parts which make up the folding and reclining mechanism. If just one of these metal pieces break the reclining mechanism fails and the chair can no longer be used. The metal parts are custom made in the far east for each different style of chair and are impossible to buy and replace in the UK.
Regardless of where you purchase your teak garden furniture always try to buy chairs that are in a fixed postion such as our teak bench chairs or teak stacking baru chairs they will last a lot longer than chairs with moving parts.
We get many emails and telephone calls everyday asking about our Teak Garden Furniture , a popular topic for our potential customers is to ask “how strong are the teak tables we sell?”, the photo attached to this post is one of our most popular tables that extends from 180cm to 240cm. Its show 10 of our staff standing on it (please don’t try this at home!), each member of staff weighs around 50 kilos so approximately 500 kilos is on top of the table. The traditional construction techniques used in the manufacturer of our tables such as mortise and tenon joints,teak dowels and dovetail joints help to give them extra strength and durability.
We will be posting answers to customers questions as well as help and general advice for buying teak garden furniture on this blog, we are going to try and keep this a “waffle” free zone so if you need a photo of a particular product or want to know a size,weight or dimension let us know and we will do our best to get back to you as soon as we can!