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Why We Switched from Timber to Qwood: A Joinery Perspective
05 August 2025
When it comes to quality, durability, and efficiency in window and door manufacturing, Q-wood has quickly become the go-to alternative to traditional timber beads. But don’t just take our word for it, hear directly from professionals who’ve made the switch and never looked back.
Tom Buckler - JTP Joinery
"I'm Tom Buckler, one of the partners at JTP Joinery. We've been going now for 14 years manufacturing timber windows and doors. We started using it because it comes in perfect every time basically. We don't need to prep it between painting, it cuts out a lot of processes. When it's spray finished you can't tell the difference between Q-wood and timber.
The appearance I don't think it's any different once it's been sprayed. It's less likely to be dented and damaged when you're using it which is quite handy, and there's less prep work involved when you're spraying the Q-wood compared to timber.
In terms of durability we haven't had any issues at all compared to timber where you might get movement, you may get issues with paint holding on the timber sometimes depending on what timber you use. Usability and workability is much better than timber because we can scribe it, we can cut it without any split out which is very beneficial.
With timber a lot more process is involved with creating certain types of bead. In terms of efficiency we're not making it so we're buying it in, it goes straight into the rack and then we spray it, and then we can use it straight away.
The fact that we're not having to do all the prep work in between coats of paint is a massive benefit to us. Q-wood performs better than timber long term in the windows. Because we've been using it for 10 years now we know the jobs we've used in the past, we know it's performing well. We know jobs where we've used timber in the past and it's not performed well, it's moved, it's opened up in the joints and more prone to water ingress.
The clipping glazing system has been brilliant for us. The fact that we're not pinning the beads, filling the beads and painting them afterwards is a real benefit. The fact that we can literally install the clip, push the bead on without any making good afterwards, it's really sped up the process, but also it's lent itself to giving us a better finished product.
Once you've used it on one or two jobs or even one or two windows, the benefits are so profound that it will be quite an obvious switch from timber to Q-wood."
Taunton Joinery
"We used to make all our own internal bars and we used to end up with fluffiness on there which we have to then trim off afterwards when we get a break out.
Just inconsistencies in profiles, see this end came out really well, this end didn't so we've had to make another one, whereas with the Q-woods we just don't get that problem.The only time we ever get any damage is if we drop a piece, and then we've also got the headdrip here.
We use this on the top of all our windows to conceal our trickle vents. We used to use timber for that but we used to find it would curl significantly, but since we've started using this we've never had any problems."