Most of what gets made at Benchborne started as a random find. A piece of wood that caught my eye before there was any plan for it. The grain, the color, a flaw or flaws that stood out. I purchase them because they deserve to exist as something — what that something is gets figured out later.
And flaws — I feel like those are the things that bring out the true character of the wood. They’re not something to be covered up or cut away, but something to be highlighted in some way. A bore hole running through the face. An odd figure in the grain. Something that makes that board unlike any other board that ever came from that tree. That’s worth building around, not hiding.
Every species is also its own learning journey. I’ll find a piece that catches my eye — the color, the grain, something I can’t quite name — buy it, and then go find out what it actually is. That research rabbit hole is part of the process. Padauk is a good example. I picked it up because it’s genuinely stunning — that deep burnt orange that stops people mid-look. What I didn’t know until I started digging into it was that Padauk is used in the making of some instruments. That’s the kind of thing you don’t expect to find out about a piece of wood sitting in a stack at a lumber yard. But that’s what makes it interesting.
The species matter — but not in the way most people might expect. Wenge and Bocote both have a strong, almost confrontational presence. Dark, graphic, impossible to ignore. Some wood earns its place simply because it looks like nothing else. That’s enough of a reason.
The business card holders are a good example of how this works in practice. That wood sat around for a while. There was no plan for it. Then the proportions made sense, the thickness was right, and it was obvious what it wanted to become. The material came first. The object followed.
But there’s a layer to selection that goes beyond how something looks today. Wood changes over time — and that’s part of the decision.
Cherry deepens and richens as it ages, becoming more itself with every year. Padauk transitions from that vivid burnt orange to a darker, warmer reddish-brown over time. These are woods that reward the person who owns them long enough to watch it happen.
It’s also why some species don’t make the cut. Purpleheart is stunning the day it’s finished — vivid, almost unreal. But over time it can transition away from that striking purple, losing some of what made it special in the first place. That’s not a trade worth making to the person buying it.
Every piece that leaves this bench started as something that caught my eye in a lumber yard or a stack of boards. No project in mind. No spec to fill. Just something that looked like it had a reason to exist.
Figuring out that reason — and then learning everything about it along the way — is the best part of the work.