Ever wondered how raw timber is crafted into the beautiful finished products that bring your projects to life? If the answer is yes then follow along for that exact process.

To give a bit of background, we imported some beautiful thermally modified Poplar some time ago with the intention of running this raw material into some lovely exterior cladding. The thermal modification process increases stability, durability in addition to changing the aesthetic of the timber. Poplar in particular to a beautiful chocolate brown as seen below.

There are a number of steps and processes involved in transitioning the Raw timber into the finished cladding product. At a high level, the steps will be:

1 ) Design some cladding profile options
2) Selecting the most suitable and desired design
3) Drawing up the required profile cutters to machine the required profile
4) Sending off the drawings to the tool makers to manufacture the cutters
5) Square dressing the raw material
6) Machine setup for the new profile knives
7) Machining the square dressed material to the finished profile
8) Defect docking, end docking
9) Packing and tallying the finished product

Stay tuned and following along to see the updates as we progress with this product journey.

Designing the profile:
As well as being aesthetic, the cladding design also has to be functional for it’s intended use case. Some things to think about include -

Fixing methods of the board - Will the board be secret fixed or face fixed? (screws concealed vs screws visible)
The maximum board width yield - What maximum width is able to be machined from the raw material. This will be used as a driving dimension for the overall width.
Water and dust/debris flow on the board - Subtle angles can be utilised on the board shoulders in order to encourage run-off.
Securing method of the board - will they be fixed using clips or screwed through the board?
Tactility - Avoid sharp square edges which may be unpleasant if brushing passed the cladding.

We have opted to run this material into a profile which can be used for either face fixed or secret fixed configurations. The secret fixing option has been very popular in other products we manufacture.
The overall board width will be 145mm. This works well with reducing wastage from the feed stock and aesthetically a good middle ground without appearing too ‘busy’.

Given that a secret fixing method is required this will govern the tongue and groove profile that we will use for this product. I also lknow the maximum width we can yield (140mm) and the maximum thickness we can yield (20mm).
With that in mind I can use these non-negotiables to start the design process:

Poplar cladding starting design

For the secret fixing method, the groove from the successive board must have enough overlap to conceal the screw (fixing point) which is driven through the tongue side of the board.
In the above drawing I have also included a small angle seen on the tongue and groove edges in order to encourage water run-off if laid in a horizontal configuration.

I played around with a few different profiles on the face of the board such as contoured patterns and rebated patterns which we offer in other products. Given the beautiful flowing nature of grain in the Poplar, I opted to go with a simple flat design on the top which displays the full uninterrupted available width of the raw material.
This resulted in the below:

With the design selected, I can now draw up cutter profiles.
These will be draw up and sent to the tool makers. Along with this, we can begin square dressing the material for it’s first machining pass.

More to come soon!

Product journey - From concept to completion

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