Observations from the Woodshop

New Pieces

Sometimes it works out that pieces I design for a particular customer come out so nicely that we end up adding them to one of our collections.  We are just finishing up some furniture for a law office in Charleston, West Virginia, and as part of that project we did two desks that I am very happy with, and though I may make some slight changes in them I think that they are going to end up being added to our “Meander” line of work.

Executive desk 84″ wide x 36″ deep x 30″ tall in walnut and butternut

Computer Desk 72″ wide x 24″ deep x 30″ tall in walnut and butternut

How it’s made

Customers are often curious about the methods of construction we use in our furniture.  In this entry, we are going to show the work that goes into our furniture, starting with when the lumber arrives at the shop.

This is how our lumber comes to us.

 

This will make 12-15 pieces of furniture.

Our lumber supplier (Irion Lumber) keeps stock for table tops in flitches.

Boards stacked in their flitches

Lumber comes to us as “rough sawed”.  We plane it to remove the saw marks and to get it to a uniform thickness.

Vester planes the lumber

Jim works with parts lists, trying to best use the lumber and to find the best grain and figure for the various pieces.

Parts at this point are cut to 2″ over length.

Jim cuts parts to 2″ over length on the radial arm saw.

Boards are then run over the jointer, which gives them a straight edge, so that they may be ripped to width on the table saw.

Vester runs a walnut board over the jointer.

At this point, all of the boards have been marked for the width they are to be sawed.  A power feeder is used to pull the boards across the saw.  This gives better results than hand-feeding and makes the task safer.

Eddie and Jim run boards across the table saw.

 

Our furniture is constructed using traditional joinery.  What follows are some pictures of how we cut mortise and tenon joints, which is a type of joinery that goes back thousands of years.

 

Vester at the hollow chisel mortiser

Close-up of mortise joint being cut

Completed mortise

 Vester at the single-end tenoner

 

 Close-up of tenon being cut

 

Tenon as it comes from tenoner

 

Check back from time to time, as we will be adding more entries on different methods of work that we use here.

Lumber

We use the best hardwood lumber that we can find, so as you can imagine, our lumber suppliers are very important to us.  A few years ago, I was looking for a new supplier for cherry, and I gave Lou Irion (of Irion Lumber) a call.  I told him what I was looking for and he suggested that I start with a small order to see if I was happy with what they had to offer.  From the day I received that first shipment, I have never looked back. 

First of all, they just have great lumber.  We use more cherry than anything else, and their cherry is second to none.  It has good color, minimal defects, and lots of character.  One of my favorite things about Irion Lumber is that when they have a really good log, they will saw it and put it up as a flitch.  A flitch is a group of boards that were kept together as they came from the log.  We like to use flitch-cut material because it makes for great color and grain matches in our table tops.  All of our dining table tops are made from flitch-matched boards.

 Boards stacked in their flitches

Irion Lumber is also an outstanding company to do business with.  More than once I have received the following phone call, “Jim, I have someone coming in that is not a regular customer.  They are interested in 5/4 cherry, and we don’t have a lot of it at the moment.  If you are going to be needing any soon, I won’t sell them any.”  That’s what I call customer service and loyalty to your customers.

    

Lumber arrives from Irion Lumber