What on Earth is Basswood?

February 27, 2008 |

You will have noticed that we keep referring to ‘Basswood’ being used for the majority of wooden Venetian blinds. This timber is from the ‘Tilia’ family of trees, these being native throughout the northern hemisphere and known in the UK as a ‘Lime’ and the USA as ‘Linden’ trees. It is known in the trade as Basswood, particularly in North America. This name originates from the inner bark of the tree, known as bast which has many uses in it’s own right.
Basswood is ideal for use in wooden Venetian blinds as it is very pale in it’s natural colour, the tree grows fast and straight so there are very few knots in the timber and being a hardwood, it is very durable, especially when it has been kiln dried (as all the timber used in our blinds has been) yet in it’s ‘green’ state is soft enough to be easily milled and sawn.
The paleness of the natural timber makes it extremely accepting of stains and colourings. This in combination with very little grain results in it being possible to produce stained timber that resembles an extremely wide range of other timbers. This is important as obviously many trees are now endangered due to over logging and should not be used (and are often protected) and others, such as Oak and Ash are slower growing and are therefore far more expensive.
It used to be that ‘Ramin‘ was the timber of choice for furniture manufacture but due to some unscrupulous timber suppliers, this was being sourced from protected rainforests in Vietnam and Indonesia. As this was a major cause for concern, there has been an almost unanimous move within the industry to use Basswood instead. Basswood is easily managed due to the speed that it grows, of which means that there is very little impact upon the environment.

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