James Jones & Sons installed the UK's first commercial incising line at Lockerbie in 2013 for our fencing products in order to increase the penetration and provide uniformity of Tanalith E preservative treatment.
When using timber products for ground contact applications, such as fence posts or landscaping sleepers, it is vital that they are chemically treated to Use Class 4. The only way to ensure that the chemical treatment penetrates the timber deeply enough to provide Use Class 4 protection, particularly when using a species such as sitka spruce, is to put it through an incising process.
Our incising machines insert a series of small incisions on all faces of the timber along its entire length. These incisions enable the chemical preservative, applied later under high pressure in our treatment tanks, to penetrate deeper into the timber in order to increase the envelope of protection against fungal decay when in contact with the ground.
Our incising process ensures that all our fencing and landscaping timbers have a 6mm envelope of protection, which enables James Jones to offer a 15 year warranty on all incised timber products.
Defined by Use Classes (BS EN 335-1), preservative treated timbers need to be treated to the correct Use Class for the job for which they are intended. Use Classes range from 1 to 4, with timbers that require the minimum protection, for instance internal building timbers, coming under Use Class 1, while fencing timbers which are permanently exposed to the weather and could be either used in or out of ground contact, are designated in Use Classes 3.2 and 4 respectively.
Manufactured by fully trained plant operators, all of our incised products are clearly marked to identify the year of production and confirm the built-in confidence in a quality product.
The company now has incising lines at Lockerbie, Aboyne and Hangingshaw and our commitment to incising all of our Use Class 4 ground contact timber fencing products has seen much of the timber retail sector encouraging their customers to also specify incised products so that they get a product that is truly fit for purpose.