HOME CUSTOM WORK

Dryad Studios
Dryad Studios

FINE, HANDMADE
ARTS & CRAFTS FURNITURE

....SINCE 1985

SALE ITEMS LINKS  
ABOUT US SHOP TOUR

E-MAIL

CONTACT US
YOUTH FURNITURE MISSION FURNITURE

FEEDBACK
CUSTOMERS' COMMENTS

 

 

 

 

 

SHOP TOUR

 

 

 

 

Wood

big red   

   The quality of the wood available has declined dramatically over the last 80 years. There is ample supplies of most domestic species, but the "grade" has suffered. Most boards are narrower and of a much different "texture" than was generally available to the craftsmen of the early Arts & Crafts movement.

    We realized over twenty years ago that if we were going to build furniture and have control over the quality, we would first have to have control of the wood.
  og pileL
    We have cut over 350,000 board feet of lumber from our property. A lot was lower grades and species that have little use for furniture. This was sold to a variety of local buyers, ranging from pallet factories to tool handle manufacturers.

   Also, we have built our house and shop and several other buildings from the lesser grades. However, we have been building Arts & Crafts furniture from Oak that I have quarter sawn for the past twenty years. All of our logs do not come from our own land. Usually the time to cut and skid our own trees is hard to find lately, and we  buy high quality logs from several of the local sawmills in the area.
  04d82c60
  
   The owners have been generous in allowing me to pick through their piles of logs(sometimes more than 500,000 board ft on their sawmill yards) and choosing just the ten or twenty logs that I want. It allows for a very close selection of precisely the characteristics that I like. We then bring the logs up to the shop and quarter - saw them ourselves. The lumber air dries in piles in the woods, out of the sun and wind, for six months to a year.

  In 1987 we realized that the good lumber that we were cutting was being ruined by drying it at a local kiln. We installed a Nyle Dehumidification Kiln Unit in a large, super-insulated room that we built onto the shop. The first load through the kiln was a spectacular success. Every load since then has been as wonderful.
  sorting wood

  We now keep at least 5,000 bd ft, and sometimes as much as 10,000 bd ft of quarter sawn lumber on hand. This allows us a  choice and versatility of grain matching that is impossible for  most smaller shops. In fact, many times, all of the lumber in a   piece of furniture comes from the same log. This close match of color and grain is what helps produce the praise that our furniture has received.

  We have had to purchase Ash lumber lately for some of our work. We do not have a local source of quality Ash logs. Trying to get quality lumber from the three major retail suppliers in our area has been an effort akin to teaching a parakeet calculus. I am now working on projects that would allow me to pull my sawmill to the source of the best logs and saw my own lumber there, rather than trust anyone else.

 

 

 

ABOUT US  YOUTH FURNITURE  MISSION FURNITURE  SHOP TOUR  CUSTOM WORK  CONTACT US  LINKS
This Web Site was created, built, and is maintained by Dryad Studios.