Category Archives: wood 101

“Where Does Your Wood Come From?”

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Some customers come to our showrooms looking to ‘stump’ us (pardon my pun) with this question. You expect us to give a general answer that tells you nothing and that’s when you can really start to nail us to the wall. It’s a completely reasonable suspicion. I probably would have the same thought process if Hardwood Artisans wasn’t such a big part of my life. I’ve used our furniture since I was a baby, quite literally. My father is John Hillgren and he met my mom, Jennifer, through the company itself. My mom worked in the office as an accountant. One day, my dad walked up to her (with his bobbing afro, mind you) and said ‘I’m sorry, but I need you to come to my office, you’re distracting all of the craftsmen’. Just as my parents met through the company, so did my aunt and uncle. Not to mention both my Aunt Denny and my Uncle Steven work with the company as well. I’m definitely not far from the truth when I say that my entire family has been a part of Hardwood Artisans.

About every employee here has known me since I was in diapers. I’ve been proud of Hardwood Artisans since the get-go, often bragging to my elementary school friends that my father owned a furniture business. My siblings and I used to run around the floor of the shop gathering up scrap wood and gluing the scrap together into miniature furniture so our Barbie dolls could enjoy hardwood furniture as well. I knew that the company made wood furniture, but I never knew where it came from or how we acquire it. I’m well versed on the company, but I never knew the whole story of our wood until I sat down with Mark Gatterdam, Greg Gloor, Kevin Carlson, and John Buss.

Just about half of my family is in this Hardwood Artisans picture!

So once again, where does our wood come from? To begin, let’s first answer the question that you’re really thinking. “Do you clear-cut forests for your own pleasure and benefit?” The answer is incredibly simple; No. All four of these men had a different way of informing me of this, but it just comes down to the fact that we do not clear cut or burn down forests for our furniture, nor do we work with companies who do. Our goal in this business is not to get involved in a dishonest market; it’s to provide people with long-lasting furniture in a sustainable way. The companies we work with don’t just cut down trees for lumber – they also have regeneration programs put in place.  They replant trees, so their resources aren’t consistently being depleted. I didn’t know about regeneration programs before this, and that really caught my attention. It’s good to know that our furniture is not only sustainable in its longevity but the wood we procure is constantly being replanted.

We expect all of our pieces to last as long as it takes for the tree it was made out of to grow back. That means this cherry Waterfall Shogun Chest should remain simply beautiful for at least 100 years!

It’s funny to me that this question consistently comes up. Not because it’s surprising – heck, clear cutting forests is part of the United States’ history and heritage. Trees were in the way of railroads, farms, roads, houses. Everything, it seemed, was more important than trees, so they were burned and clear-cut until a civilization was created. I understand that forestry is a big part of our world, and that the worries over our trees are significant. However, both Mark and Greg assured me that there is several times the volume of trees in the United States than there was hundreds of years ago. What makes me laugh is the fact that we’ve advertised that we’re a local business and that our furniture lasts a lifetime, but most people don’t know anything about where our wood comes from or just how sustainable the company is. When I’m asked to describe Hardwood Artisans, the first things that come to mind is long lasting furniture and the craftsmen’s passion, not where we get our wood from.

For starters, most of our wood comes from the East Coast. As many of you may know (and probably have experienced), the climate throughout the United States differs from coast to coast. For example, if you were to come to the Washington, DC area in the middle of July, you can expect 100% humidity… yet it won’t be raining (this we experienced at last year’s Lemonade Social). The woods we get are primarily northeastern run, which means they are already acclimated to the East coast climate. If you were to bring wood over from Hawaii to here, let’s say Choya wood, there’s a possibility it could respond oddly to the climate adjustment. If you’re worried about your Mahogany or exotic wood piece, don’t be. We get our Mahogany from Belize currently, but it’s a stable wood, and therefore not wholly affected by switching climates. The advantage of getting our wood from this area is the fact that we know the climate, we know how the wood reacts, and the wood is used to the moisture content and temperature.

Isn't Choya wood cool looking?

We’re always up for working with exotic wood, but we’re always careful to make sure the piece can expand and contract safely.

More details on the location of our lumber – our Cherry wood comes from Pennsylvania and New York. Our Birch, Maple, and Oak timber comes from New York. Walnut is from Kentucky and Indiana, and Ash comes from just about everywhere. Mahogany is the only wood that we import from South America. It’s certified under the FSC and is also listed under the CITES, which means it can’t be imported unless the proper forms and pedigree are filled out first.

Did you know that Mahogany is the national tree of Belize?

Another question you may be wondering is why don’t we certify all of our wood? We used to – Larry Spinks (one of the founders of Hardwood Artisans) was actually on the FSC board. The FSC is the forest Stewardship Council. It’s a nonprofit organization that supports the proper management of the world’s forests. They’re generally involved in certification of forests and lumber. Certified wood, however, costs about 15% more. This may seem like an unjustified excuse, but that 15% counter into the price of our furniture. While all of the owners would like to be FSC certified, at the moment we can’t rationalize it, especially when our lumber companies are already doing their best. The price hike is mostly due to the fact that the lumber companies are required to go through the certification process – which is basically lots of paperwork and additional work. Especially when most of the places we get our wood from are already working as though they were FSC certified and a lot of our wood already comes from FSC certified state forests.

Look, I even got the stump all ready for you!

So, now that you know that our wood practically comes from your backyard. You know the clean truths about our hardwood furniture; do you still want to nail us to the stump? If you have any more questions, feel free to comment on this blog or contact me directly at lorelei@hardwoodartisans.com.

Written by – Lorelei Hillgren, Hardwood Artisans Marketing Coordinator.

Bending wood (Plywood 101, part 3)

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You might be wondering why I am leading with a picture of a dishwasher. I’ll get to that.

My first experience with bending wood took place when I was not working in the shop. I was like many of you, ham and egging it out of my garage at home for fun.

I had come across some wild cherry wood, deciding to have it lumbered rather than find its fate the way of all the other non-descript logs into firewood. Transporting whole logs to the sawyer, and then transporting wet lumber to the kiln, and then transporting the dried stock back to the garage is another story in itself. Getting back to this one, my father wanted an end table build – more like a lamp table – more like a drum (round) lamp table….with drawer….and a shelf. Get it?

Being the dutiful son, I agreed. After months of thinking about it, I plunged in, shaping legs and making jigs for the round body from which I was going to use as both the apron and the drawer face. But when I was ready to bend the wood around the form, I kept breaking it. The wood wasn’t thin enough. The radius was too tight. The curve got brittle. Crushed and defeated, I did like any man would. I got a beer and complained to my wife about how hard my life had just become.

After several minutes of consideration, she asked me a few questions about the problem. She understood that I needed a steamer to heat up the wood and inject moisture to make it more pliable, but the idea of buying one was prohibitive, and the idea of making one was more than I could mentally process at that time. Heat and moisture…a lot of heat, and a lot of moisture.

After a bit more contemplation, my wife suggested that I use the dishwasher to solve the probem. Thanks honey, and I’ll try not to mess up the dishwasher.

After a few attempts, we got the dishwasher on the correct setting, and voila, a set of pliable thin pieces of wood that were wrapped around a form, glued into place, and held with band clamps (straps). Once the glue set up, I trimmed the rough edges, cut the drawer face out, and move on with life.

Hardwood Artisans has been doing solid wood laminations for a few years now. The round aprons under our round and oval tables, and more recently, the Linnaea dresser drawer faces and the Linnaea chair back splat. These are thin layers of solid wood that have been sandwiched together and glued, then placed on top of a curved form, and then set inside a vacuum bag. The bag has a pump attached, which sucks all the air out. The wood has nowhere to go except to follow the flow of the curve. Four hours later, it’s like a brick. Rather than needing to apply steam to assist in the curving, the vacuum bag has helped considerably. It draws the wood down evenly and slowly. The air is exhausted slowly, so the wood has time to relax as it conforms to the jig. It is quick, clean, and precise.

Though in some small way I miss the old dishwasher trick.

Perhaps better than a dishwasher, but lacking panache.

Perhaps better than a dishwasher, but lacking panache.

If all of this sounds like a bit much for you, head on over to our website, where you can order dining tables, dining chairs and bedroom pieces that feature bent lamination.

Plywood 101 (part 1)

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Lamination is a four-letter word in the consumer’s mind today. This is largely because so many people have been screwed over by poor laminates over secondary substrates. Ply, as it applies here, is a single thickness, fold or layer. Our plywood is referred to as hardwood plywood. This is because the substrate is made up of layers of hardwood. Specifically, poplar, basswood and luan are some of the woods used to make up the core.

Other plywood cores are made up of particle board, straw board, wheat board and medium density fiberboard (MDF). These are often viewed as inferior because they don’t last very long. There is far less strength associated with these other cores because they are not laminated (except MDF). Lamination is simply the process of building up something in thin sheets or layers. Ply is therefore the thing, and lamination is the process.

Layers of ply are oriented at right angle to each other. When you look at the end of one of our adjustable shelves, you see dark and light alternating colors. What you are seeing are the alternating grains. End grain is darker than long grain. This is what makes plywood strong and stable. In this case “stable” means that it doesn’t expand and contract nearly as much as solid hardwood does, making it in some ways, a more versatile material.

The top coating on plywood is called the veneer. The wood veneer that is applied to the surface of plywood is about 1/32 inches thick. Each strip of veneer you see on the plywood is referred to as flitch. The seams are called flitch seams. The flitch pattern should be a perfect match, much like the book matching on our doors, done over and over again. Another veneer process, though less common, is called rotary cut veneer. This would be like rolling a log with a knife against it, peeling up the wood in a solid continuous sheet. This is a more sophisticated machining process, as you can imagine.

In part 2 of this series, we’ll explain more about plywood and how it functions in good quality furniture.

In the meantime, here’s a video from Bob Vila about how plywood is made.

http://video.bobvila.com/m/21319559/making-birch-veneer-plywood.htm

Redwood of the East

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I was reading an interesting article in the local paper about the American chestnut restoration efforts. The article by Alice Felts, in the Fauquier Times Democrat, discussed efforts by the students, teachers, and arborists to re-introduce a new chestnut tree that is 15/16th’s American chestnut, and 1/16th Asian chestnut. The Asian chestnut was the source of the blight that killed all the American chestnuts. As of this writing, the article was not up on the web.

This introduction seems a bit like allergy treatments. They inject you with a bit of the thing that is the problem so that a natural immunity can occur. The efforts by The American Chestnut Foundation, http://www.acf.org/ is very interesting as to how to ever so slightly alter the genetics of the tree to allow it to grow once again. The American chestnut has been described as the “Redwood of the East”, a giant of a tree that created huge eco-systems almost single-handedly. Its nuts fed whole communities of wildlife, and its wood a prime source of naturally rot resistant building material.

I’m thinking I need some chestnuts in my forest………

“I’m somebody now!”

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I like to think of myself as being good at what I do. I work for a company that has been in business for 32 years, and I’ve been a part of it for the last 22. And yet every day I learn something new as a woodworker. In this field, it is very hard to be a “know-it-all,” no matter how hard I may try. So, as you can see, today when I make a piece of furniture for a customer, there are many things–collected over my 25 years as a woodworker–that I take into account. You might even consider me an expert furniture maker… even a master craftsman.

My extremely talented Marketing Director recently coerced me into writing down some of my sage knowledge in the form of an article, which we submitted to DesignLine magazine. Today the mail arrived, and with it came the magazine, with my published article on pages 16 – 17! “The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here! I’m somebody now!”

So, what do you think? Did you learn something? Bonus points if you can guess which movie I’ve quoted.