Two kinds of furniture are sold as reclaimed. One is made from timber that had a life before it reached the workshop. The other is new timber distressed to look as if it had. On a showroom floor they can be hard to tell apart. On paper they are different products, and the difference decides what a retailer is allowed to say.
Where ours comes from
Our reclaimed stock is bought from suppliers here in Jodhpur, and it arrives as boards that have already been used once. No two have aged the same way: colour, old paint and the depth of the surface change from one strip to the next. That variation is the material, and it is why no two chevron fronts leave our floor identical.
It still has to be dried
Old timber is not dry timber. A board that has spent years in a building carries whatever moisture its last home gave it, and it will move once it is opened up, like any other. So reclaimed stock goes through the same drying as new mango, down to eight to ten per cent before it reaches a joint.
What can be proved
The word on its own proves nothing. What a buyer can put on a label depends on documentation, and the recognised claim is FSC Recycled: wood verified as recovered rather than newly felled, tracked through the same chain-of-custody system as certified forest timber.
We can supply reclaimed stock under that claim on request. The claim and our certificate code, FSC-C229285, are then printed on the invoice and the packing list, which is what a buying team will ask to see.
Reclaimed is a description. FSC Recycled is a claim someone has checked.
What to ask a supplier
Ask where the reclaimed stock comes from, and whether the supplier will say so in writing. Ask whether it is dried before it is cut, and to what moisture content. Ask whether the offer is an FSC Recycled claim or only a description, and if it is a claim, whose certificate it travels under.
And ask what happens when a board does not take the finish the way its neighbours do. With reclaimed timber, sooner or later one will, and a supplier who has an answer has seen it before.
Written at the works, Boranada · October 2026
