Where is Teak from?

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!

How to check mositure content of Teak Garden Furniture

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!

What to look for when buying a teak garden bench - Part 1

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.

Why don't we sell teak reclining chairs?

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.

Looking for a strong Teak Table?

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.