Shop Pictures and Construction Details

We have established long term relationships with our wood suppliers to ensure a consistent as possible supply both of quantities and also quality, often dealing directly with the sawmills.  Our Western Figured Maple comes from a local sawmill specializing in highly figured woods. The Mango we use is sawn by a small mill on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Layout of the lumber is the crucial fist step, grain and color must be maximized while wastage of valuable wood must be minimized, two needs which often are at odds with each other. All boards are not created equal yet within a species and grade they cost us the same. The fanciest wood goes where it counts and the lesser wood  we reserve for corner blocks, internal parts and drawer sides.

As we bring wood into the shop the best boards are always pulled for Brendan Rockers. Then we look first for wood seat stock, then rear leg stock, then arms and so on. 

Individual parts are shaped and sub- assemblies glued.

Our shop has been guided by Lean Thinking since 1993 when Greg realized he had intuitively discovered the discipline of continual improvement and critically looking at every belief when he worked in his garage for the first twelve years. Like any discipline Lean isn't the best choice for every situation, but is a wonderful lens to examine through. An enjoyable and quick read on the subject is "Everything I needed to know I learned in Joes Garage"

Parts are hand-fitted to each chair by our craftsmen. Efforts to make the parts as close to or at the final fit are the only sensible method, but the vagaries of wood usually require skilled hand fitting. 

All our furniture (except the Brendan Rocker) is constructed  with full Mortice and Tenon construction, the strongest wood construction methods possible. The Brendan Rocker is using a unique boat building joinery.

We use two part boat building epoxy as an glue, a 100% solids adhesive that cures by the two parts reacting to produce a hard inert material.  Epoxy is longer lived and many times stronger than conventional PVA yellow woodworking glues. And unlike conventional wood glue (PVA glue) epoxy bonds end-grain as well as side grain. The downside is that epoxy is not reversible; it cannot be easily disassembled. But we don't build our chairs to be disassembled. We build them to last.

We have developed techniques to rebuild our chairs by entirely removing damaged parts and any associated adhesive then replacing with a new part.

Finish sanding occurs after the entire chair is completely glued up.

Sanding is a highly skilled task. It is also the single most time consuming part of building our furniture set the most critical, consuming as much as one third of the total time to build a piece.  

When a new person starts they are usually over confident at the sanding stage.  After all sanding is something any one can do. We see casual woodworkers in this position taking as much as four times as long with a much lower quality our as highly skilled furnituremakers .

As a final step we apply several coats of Precatalyzed Lacquer (commonly termed as Precat Lacquer) to bring out the beauty and depth of the wood and protect it from water marks and abrasions. Precat lacquer bridges the gap between the application traits of nitrocellulose lacquer and the durability of varnish. Precat is a complex finish composed of urea formaldehyde or urea melamine and an alkyd that has some nitrocellulose resin added to make it handle like normal lacquer. The addition of an acid catalyst initiates a chemical reaction that forms a very tough, durable finish comprised of both varnishes and lacquers.  Catalyzed lacquer comes in two versions: precatalyzed and post-catalyzed. Precatalyzed lacquer has the components premixed by the manufacturer. Precat Lacquer is unaffected by any quantity of water below 110 degrees F and most mild solvents.

After curing each chair is inspected and rubbed out by hand. 

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