The Six-Metre Bench

Every so often a job comes in that's really a question about scale — can you actually make it this big? This was one of those. We built a bench so long that when the delivery came, it stood the full length of the Tesco lorry parked behind it. There's a photo of the two side by side, and honestly the bench holds its own.

The top came off a single oak slab, milled here on our own mill so we could keep the whole length in one piece rather than piecing it together. A slab that long is going to have checks — splits that run in from the ends as it dries — so we set butterfly keys across them: little bow-tie inlays let into the surface that pin the timber either side of the check and stop it travelling any further. They earn their keep and they look right, which is the best kind of joint. The whole top was worked back by hand, planed and then oiled, so you feel the grain rather than a film of lacquer sitting on top of it.

Give us your goal and we'll get there. The lorry was just a handy ruler.

The long refectory tables that came afterwards sit on steel legs Simon welds himself — height-adjustable, so a top can be set to the exact working or dining height a room needs, and levelled dead flat on an uneven floor. That's the wood-and-metal workshop again: an oak top milled from one tree, standing on legs made a few feet away at the same bench. Between the two we can make a table almost any length you care to name.

If you've a long room and a longer table in mind, tell us the goal and we'll work out how to get there.