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Our Light Oak Sideboards are supplied in a variety of styles and sizes, so we have something to suit all tastes. Our sideboards are fully assembled and hand crafted from solid wood. We offer free delivery on any order and placement in the room of your choice.
If a sideboard is just not enough take a look at our Light Oak Dressers.

Similar to oak but cheaper
Ash is a hardwood that can sometimes look remarkably similar to oak.  It has an attractive appearance, especially for cabinet furniture such as an ash sideboard, but has not traditionally been widely used for furniture making.  Because oak is more widely known, furniture made from this timber attracts higher prices in general and, to the uninformed; ash is seen as being somehow inferior.  This is not the case as both woods have excellent albeit slightly different qualities.   

One of the chief qualities of ash timber is that it is shock resistant.  This means it can withstand movement or vibration without splitting or cracking as easily as some other timbers.  This quality meant that ash wood was traditionally reserved for making wheel spokes for wagons and handles for tools such as hammers and axes.  Because it can be burnt ‘green’ without seasoning or drying, it was also popular as firewood.   

The dawn of mechanised transport saw ash being used to make the framework for railway coaches, lorry cabs and car bodies.  In fact, the British car manufacturer Morgan still uses ash frames to make the bodywork for its range of classic sports tourers.  So how does this useful timber end up being used for the making of cabinet furniture – particularly ash sideboards?   

When is an ash sideboard one of oak?
Oak furniture has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity during recent years and this has been due partly to a move away from dark oak colours to more natural, lighter, finishes and partly due to new supplies of oak timber being sourced from North America, China and the Far East.  These new supplies are not inexhaustible, so alternative timbers have been considered, one of which is ash.  In fact, due to their similar appearance, some furniture from China has in recent years been sold as oak because this is its local name, even though it is actually from the Fraxinus or ash family of trees.   

All furniture of the Fraxinus genus is labelled as ash at Right Price Furniture, including all our ash sideboards, and some may think that to do otherwise is a deliberate intention to mislead.  In fairness, this may not always be the case as the opportunity for error can sometimes be considerable.  By way of illustration, consider the mountain ash or rowan tree.   

The mountain ash has an almost identical leaf pattern to the ash tree.  They are both called ash, so logic would suggest they are of the same species BUT… mountain ash is from the Sorbus family and is actually more closely related to apple and hawthorn.  It is easy to see therefore how, in the UK, confusion could arise between ash and mountain ash.   When it comes to an ash sideboard, it is more likely to be ash sold as oak than it is to be rowan sold as ash…!!

The difference between Ash and Oak
Oak and ash wood look very similar grain and so are often confused.  All oak wood has a radial grain as well as a regular grain.  The radial grain is perpendicular to the regular grain.  If you look carefully at the end grain of a board you can see both grain patterns.  There is no radial grain in Ash Wood; so when you look at the end of an ash timber board there is only one visible grain pattern.   When oak wood is sawn so that the radial grain is flat on the surface of the board you will see a grain pattern that some people can see as "tiger oak" this is a kind of ripple effect.  

Manufacturers of antique oak tables often used pieces of wood sawn in this manner for the table tops.  When oak is sawed in this manner it is called "quarter-sawed".  You'll never have seen a "tiger" grain pattern in ash wood. Ash and oak woods when stained the same colour look very much alike because both have the "open" grain pattern that absorbs stain in a similar way.  Ash is often just a little bit more swirly in look that is oak and is very pretty when stained.