From the road

I'm around timber every working day.

Learn · Plan · Build

That puts me close to the real timber trade — the packs, the people, the stock, the forklifts, the machining sheds, and the good independent businesses that don’t always show up when you search online.

I still work in the trade every day — so the site comes from yards, mills, merchants and workshops, not a desk.

Follow along

Project ideas

Inspiration to build from

76+

Species

In the library — and growing

Guide tracks

70 timber guides across 7 tracks

Tools

Calculators you can actually use

The honest version

Why I started Mill & Merchant

My name's Shane, and Mill & Merchant has grown out of my everyday working life.

I drive lorries for a living, delivering timber every working day to merchants, workshops, yards, building sites, joiners, makers, and specialist suppliers. Because of that, I get to see timber in a way most people don't.

Not just the polished version on a website. The real version.

Packs of oak, cedar, larch, redwood, cladding, decking, joinery timber, rough sawn boards, machined profiles, damaged lengths, beautiful boards, questionable boards, and all the everyday graft that sits behind the timber trade.

I see timber being loaded, unloaded, graded, handled, stored, sold, machined, delivered, and turned into something useful. I see how different merchants work. I see which places care about what they're doing. I see the gap between the people with years of timber knowledge and the customers who are just trying to buy the right thing for a project.

That gap is what interests me.

Because buying timber can be confusing. You're faced with species names, grades, moisture content, durability classes, treatment options, movement, sizes, profiles, finishes, and prices — and half the time, nobody explains it in plain English.

Mill & Merchant is my attempt to make that easier.

It's for makers, DIYers, renovators, self-builders, small workshops, and anyone who wants to understand timber better before they spend their money.

I'm not setting this up as some polished corporate timber platform. It's more honest than that. I'm a timber nerd, a maker, and a working driver who happens to spend a lot of time in and around the trade. I ask questions, I notice things, I learn from people who know far more than me, and I try to turn that into useful, practical information.

The goal is simple: help people learn timber properly, get inspired by real projects, use practical tools to plan what they need before they buy timber.

What I'm building

Learn, plan, then build

📖

Learn & plan

Everything I wish I'd had in one place early on: species with the numbers that matter (movement, durability, workability), guides written for people on site, glossary terms without the jargon, and tools for the sums I used to do on the back of an envelope.

✓Species library — 76+ documented
✓Guide tracks — moisture, buying, structural, finishing, and the rest
✓Glossary — plain English, timber-first
✓Seven free project tools — shed, workbench, joist check, movement planner, and more

Explore knowledge →

✦

Project inspiration

Practical ideas for gardens, homes and workshops — screens, planters, cladding, storage, small joinery and more. Each one is being built out with species notes, difficulty, material estimates and links to the right calculators.

✓Garden structures — screens, planters, pergolas
✓Home improvements — cladding, storage, shelving
✓Workshop builds — benches, racks, small maker projects
✓Clear path from idea → species → quantities → supply

Browse project ideas →

Off the road

The workshop

I'm a 'Tramper' so I spend Mon-Fri living in my wagon. Outside of the day job, I spend time in my workshop messing about with timber. It’s not a polished furniture studio or anything fancy — just a proper 600sqft working space full of tools, timber stacks, sawdust and half-finished ideas! I’ve always preferred making things over sitting still, and the workshop’s where most of that ends up happening.

A lot of what I make leans towards rustic signage and simple handcrafted pieces — routed signs, painted lettering, chopping boards, benches, bits for the house, and the occasional custom job for friends or family. I enjoy the process as much as the finished thing really: choosing the timber, figuring out the grain, shaping it, sanding it back, seeing how different species behave once you actually start working them.

That hands-on side matters to me because it changes the way you look at timber completely. Driving it around the country teaches you one side of the industry, but cutting it, machining it and shaping it teaches you another. You stop seeing timber as just packs and lengths, and start noticing movement, texture, weight, smell, grain, stability — all the little things that actually matter when you’re building something with it.