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I build every piece of furniture with the idea that I want it to last for at least one hundred years. My pieces consist of solid, time-tested joinery which is often quite complex in construction. Sometimes what you can't see in furniture is what makes it special. In terms of strenghth, no factory made furniture can rival a well-made piece from a craftsperson who uses hand and eye skills to fit joints with chisels and handplanes. While I use machines for planing and cutting wood, joinery is best fitted by hand. You won't see machine made dovetails on my furniture. Compromise in quality should be reserved for production-made furniture.
In terms of quality of appearance of one of my finished pieces, it again requires a patience that can not be afforded to furniture that is not handmade. Choosing what boards to use and where to use them is a painstaking process that requires expertise on the properties of wood. Two pieces of wood from the same tree can vary greatly in terms of strength, stability, and appearance depending upon how the woods were cut and from what parts of the trunk they came from. I have been known to spend hours on a table top simply choosing which boards to use and in which way they should be oriented.
I will only use domestic, non-threatened woods for my furniture. Woods of North America are some of the most beautiful and diverse in the world. Besides the standards such as oaks, maples, and black walnut, I also like to use unusual and underutilized woods like elms, locusts, and ashes. The use of exotic woods from Asia, Africa, and South America are complicated environmental and human rights concerns. I choose to not involve myself in this trade.
The majority of my pieces are finished with a hand-rubbed oil and varnish combination that I mix. I often put as many as ten coats on a piece and burnish the last coat with very fine abrasive pads. The result feels like nothing short of silk. Another nice feature of this type of finish is the repairability. The old finish need not be removed should refinishing ever be warranted and a person would need only to rub in another coat of the oil and varnish mixture. While I rarely color the woods that I use, it does on some occasions add to the overall visual appeal. I avoid the heavily pigmented stains that are found at hardware stores (and are used in production furniture to conceal poor wood selection and shoddy surface preparation!). These types of wood colorants obscure the natural beauty of wood. When I do add color to wood, it's with dyes that don't hide the grain or chemicals that produce reactions that change the color, such as certain acids or bases.
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