Garden seat wood

Could someone please advise me which would be a good wood for an outside bench. It is about 8 slats between two iron ends, the slats are about 50mm x 30mm ish and they will be painted, A good balance between price and quality would be ideal. Thanks

iroko or teak are good choices, neither particularly cheap though, teak is exceptionally tough on tools though due to the wood containing silica.

Teak and oak splinters can be poisonous too!

Yes i agreed that teak wood isthe most obvious choice of material for outdoor furniture.It feels and looks naturally sympathetic since it was once alive itself.
It is also robust enough to withstand extremes of weather.

Malkit Ram

Publisher allteakboutique.com

Here's a couple of interesting fact about why i would choose teak wood as outdoor furniture.

Teak Wood boasts both rubber and silica in its makeup, which means it is ideal for ship decks and boats as it will give traction when wet, where any other wood simply becomes slippery. It is easy to infer, then, that teak is the wood of choice among those who enjoy maritime pursuits. In fact, teak’s lack of splintering under gunfire is what endeared it so much to naval sailors in the 1800s, who were, during times of battle, being killed more often by splintering wood than enemy fire.
The Chinese of the Ming Dynasty used teak extensively in their ship fleets, too, and this tradition continued into modern day, where the battleships of the United States Navy continue to be decked in teak to prevent slippage.

Teak is held as an ideal wood by just about anyone who knows anything about wood, because the uses for it are endless and cannot be matched by another natural material in the world.



Malkit Ram
Publisher,allteakboutique.com

so if i want to build a battleship i need to use teak and not oak

merlin50 said:

so if i want to build a battleship i need to use teak and not oak

Click to expand...

Quite so, H.M.S Warrior, the iron clad warship, has a citadel surrounding the gun deck, of eighteen inches of solid teak, deemed impenetrable by any ordinance used at that time.

Wotan

for what it's worth (and i'm a DIYer, not a pro), i would only use specialist timber if i were building a canal lock gate or something.
For the bench, i would use any timber, but the key for me is to make sure it didn't have any knots... as these will break in a slat when weight is applied. Just make sure too that the timber is treated and maintained regularly with the appropriate product.
The way a slat in a bench is cut and situated means that rains will run off it, and no endgrain is showing, so they should last.
Also, you could probably replace the slats a number of times for the same cost as slats made from specialist wood.

The best hardwood is the free stuff. I brake down old hardwood doors that people do not want.