Why Wood?
 Oak |
 Composite |
 Douglas Fir |
|---|
Historically all flagpoles were made from timber until glass fibre was developed at which point many people chose to buy glass fibre due to cost and a perceived, potentially longer life.
Glass fibre is a little cheaper to buy but the finish goes "off" after a few years as the picture below shows. They may also have an unsightly plastic looking seam, do not have the square base for your engraved brass plaque and often do not stay dead vertical due to the cheaper base fixings used to support them. Glass fibre is also difficult to dispose of and normally ends up in land fill sites which does not help our environment at all. The alternative option of wood is the genuine product, natural and kind to the environment, looks far superior and is the best!!
Wood, however will keep its finish for many years with some gentle TLC every 3 to 5 years or so. All that is necessary is that he flagpole should be inspected regularly and lowered for a thorough examination and re-coating. It does not suffer from any of the problems associated with glass fibre and because it stands clear from the ground, will not rot.
Wood is environmentally friendly and will out live you and me if rubbed down gently and re-varnished or re-glossed every 3 to 5 years or so.
We are sometimes asked why we go to the trouble of laminating our flagpoles rather than using a solid piece of timber. Despite the considerable extra effort, we have chosen this method so that we have total control over the quality of the timber that goes into our flagpoles. In an ideal world, we would be looking for a solid piece of timber that has come from a tree that is absolutely straight with no branches for the first 30 foot of its height. We would then hope that this rarity had been very carefully seasoned to avoid any splits, checks and distortion of any kind. Unfortunately we don't live in this ideal world! Instead we buy top quality joinery grade timber that has very few defects indeed, but even then we select boards carefully and cut out any sections that contain dead knots, resin glands, wild grain, checks etc. The woodworking adhesive that we use is just about the best that you can get for exterior and marine applications - in fact it is so good that if you try to break the joint between two pieces of timber the wood itself will fail before the joint does! All of this means that by the the careful selection of boards and the planned staggering of joints, we can obtain the strength, flexibility and longevity that we aim for in a flagpole that will outlive most of us.
