Earlywood Design & Services
Converting Urban Logs into Beautiful Live Edge Slabs and Furniture
From Logs to Finished Custom Furniture
Maybe you have a tree that needs to come down because of storm damage. Maybe you have a tree that needs to come down because you are adding onto your house, or maybe the tree is fading and needs to come down for safety reasons. You love the tree and want to incorporate the wood from that tree back into your house. Maybe you want a dining room table, or kitchen table, or coffee table, or island counter top, and, maybe your children want something built as well. Here's the process.
You contact me, hopefully before the tree service has taken the tree down, so I can talk to them about where to make the cuts. We talk about what you would like to ultimately have made from the lumber.
I show up with my log truck and pick up the logs.
I haul your logs back to my place and schedule them for sawing based on the type of furniture piece you would like to have built. The size of the logs determines which mill is used.
Once sawn, your lumber is placed on a custom made pallet, sticker up to allow air to flow through the layers, and then placed in an air dry stack for 9 months to 1 year.
After air drying, your lumber gets scheduled to go into the lumber kiln for the final part of the drying process. The drying process is the most expensive step in the whole process, since every piece of lumber eventually has to go through the kiln. The cost of the drying process is $1 per board foot per inch of thickness, since a 2" thick board takes twice as long to dry as a 1" thick board.
After kiln drying, your lumber must be flattened before it can be used in the making of furniture. The flattening is done using various tools, depending on the width of the slabs. For the widest slabs, the flattening is done on my CNC.
Now the furniture building can begin.