Write to the yard

The desk answers questions of material and method: which species carries a beam, why a joint opens in winter, how a finish behaves on a floor. It does not answer commercial questions: nothing here is for sale, no order is taken, no account is opened.

What makes a question fileable

A useful question carries its context: the species or the region of the wood, the part of the building concerned, the age of the work, and what has already been tried. "My beam is cracking" is not fileable; "the 200 mm keyaki lintel over my engawa opened a 4 mm check after the first winter" is. The second kind of question gets a short answer, and sometimes a card if the point deserves an entry.

What gets no answer

Requests for valuations, purchases, dealer introductions and contractor referrals are outside the file's scope. So are questions already answered in the index: read the card first, then ask about the part the card does not cover.

Corrections

A correction is the best letter this desk receives. If a card states something wrong, say which line and what the record shows instead, with a source the desk can check. Corrected cards keep their shelf mark and change their checked-on date.