Oh, I hear you—and as someone who has pulled way too many tiny splinters out of my nephew's palm with a pair of tweezers and a magnifying glass, that question hits close to home. The short answer is: absolutely, yes. Every single outdoor bench we make is hand-sanded until the surface feels almost soft. We don't just run a machine over the planks and call it a day; after the initial coarse sanding to shape the timber, we go back in with increasingly fine grits—80, 120, then 180. The final pass is always done by hand, carefully feeling the grain with bare fingers so that not a single rough patch or hidden lift of fibre survives. If it doesn't feel buttery against the back of my own hand, it doesn't leave the workshop.
We also understand that kids are wriggly little explorers who will touch, climb, and slide their hands over every part of a bench—seat, edges, armrests, even the underside that nobody sees. So we apply the same silky-smooth treatment to the whole piece. Sharp corners are rounded, end grain is sealed and buffed, and any knots that might loosen over time are filled and polished flush. The timber itself is a fine-grained hardwood that's naturally less prone to splitting, but the true secret is simply an almost obsessive amount of attention during finishing.
You're not alone in worrying about splinters. That fear is one of the top three reasons people give up on wooden outdoor furniture and settle for plastic. But plastic gets brittle in the sun, heats up like a frying pan, and ends up in landfill. A properly sanded timber bench, on the other hand, stays comfortably warm, ages beautifully, and is genuinely safer for soft skin because natural wood doesn't form sharp brittle edges as it weathers—it just gets smoother. Over the years, a well-sanded hardwood bench develops a patina that's even kinder to hands than the day it was new.
When you run your palm over one of our benches, you'll feel what I mean. It's the difference between a hurried factory finish and a piece of furniture that was made with the tiniest, most adventurous hands in mind. If you ever feel a hint of texture you don't like, I'll personally walk you through an easy at-home touch-up with a scrap of fine sandpaper that takes thirty seconds and keeps the surface perfect for another season. But honestly, nobody has called us for that yet—and my nephew now zooms his toy cars along the seat without me hovering behind him. That's the kind of peace I want every parent to have.