The trees I use for furniture making come from Scandinavia.However for me travelling through the pine forests in Sweden and Finland, is not exactly breath taking. Row after row of trees, but this is sustained tree management, the forests are planted and grown and cut an felled. It is relatively a quick process, the trees, when felled are taken by truck to the saw mills and quarter sawn for the various grades required,some goes for construction timber, some for joinery, and smaller pieces, are joined or glued together for the furniture trade,
There is a requirement for furniture grade wood, it has to be dried to 8 moisture content, and the wood when joined together makes usable board sizes, the most popular being 2.4metres long, by 600mm wide. These are sold by the pallet load or about 120 boards at a time.The pallets are shipped by ferry to me in the UK and the journey ends with a large lorry delivering direct to me.
My task is fairly straightforward, I have to turn this timber into good quality pine furniture good enough to sell and make my living. Over the years I have developed enough knowledge to know what the buying public want,for example a the most popular chest of drawers is 900mm wide and it has 5 drawers. my machining starts with cross cutting to length sides and tops and also fronts and backs of drawers. I the rip saw all this timber to the correct width. Finally I mill or machine rebates on the back of the sides, and put moulds on the sides and front of the tops. The drawers are dovetailed using an old dovetailing machine that is big enough to take 2 sides and a front and a back at any one time.
Making the actual chest is straightforward. I have to fix the the sides to the top.I do this by by fixing battens to to top of the sides and at he same times battens equally spaced down the sides to be used for drawer runners. The top batten is drilled through both sides so a fixing is made into the side and also into the top . To keep the sides parallel I use stretchers or 75mmx 25mm pieces of wood fixed to the bottom batten .The exact length of these pieces of wood is 3mm longer than the width of the drawers. After fixing the sides top and stretchers I pin pine cladding or tongue and groove boards to the back, with the decorative side facing outwards.
By contrast making the drawers is far more time consuming, for each chest I make; I make 5 drawers to fit. The drawers which I have already dovetailed get glued and slotted together. when a box is formed with a tongue and groove bottom put in I pin it together square, using an air compressed pin gun. the drawers have to be square or they will not run properly.I sand the sides with a belt sander to smooth out the dovetail joints,. The chest of drawers is now ready for a final sand and then finishing with a suitable stain. Now days stains are much easier to buy and use, I tend to use wax with stains in or Danish oil with stains or dyes in . The effect of the stain, is to make the wood appear to be older or more antique.
I have made furniture for 20 years and in that time sold a wide variety of furniture, 30 of what I make is to customers specification, the rest is my standard sizes.
Author Resource:
Michal Hughes makes and employs people to make at his Pine Factory in Cornwall all products are sold through http://www.loloz.co.uk
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