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Amish Furniture Construction Techniques
Archive for the 'Amish Furniture Information' Category
Author: admin, October 5, 2008
Most people are under the impression that the Amish use nothing but hand tools, like block planes, hand drills, buck saws and the like when they build furniture. This is not the case. While it’s true they don’t use the “plug and play” type tools you see all the time like circular saws. What they do use is belt or air driven tools. They’ve basically adapted the same technology our country used in the early part of this century.
Behind their shops you’ll find 2 things a diesel engine and a fuel tank. The diesel engine is hooked up to a drive shaft that runs under the floor of the shop. From there they have a belt that goes up into whatever piece of equipment they need to produce their furniture. Planers, drill presses, table saws and a few others are the most commonly use equipment.
No don’t get me wrong there are a few builders out there that make furniture this way but they take a really, really long time to get it done. The Amish that don’t use belt or air driven tools are what’s referred to as the Old Order Amish. These guys are hardcore when it come to limiting technology. They don’t even use covered wagons in the winter!! While they do produce great furniture with only hand tools you will have a really hard time finding their furniture in retail stores. The main reason is the long turnaround time and the fact that the only way you can communicate with them is by snail mail.
Both types of builders us the tried and true techniques of high quality furniture construction like english dovetailed drawer boxes, mortise and tenon joints, very tight tolerances etc. The difference is basically our ability as retailers to get a hold of them, fax or voice mail compared to snail mail only, and their turn around time.
One thing you’ll find with any Amish furniture retailer is that they love wood. Unfortunately most furniture produced today comes from china and is made of particle board or osb. If does happen to be wood it’s typically rubberwood or as it’s sometimes called chinese oak. The problem there is that while it looks somewhat similar to American oak it hasn’t been kiln dried as well. Speed over quality is the name of the game with chinese wood furniture.
On a slightly different topic one of the great American institutions of high quality solid wood furniture, Stickley to be exact, now produces 80% of their furniture in Vietnam. What the F$%&!?!?!?! This makes me sick. An institution of American made furniture has fallen to the lure of lower costs over quality and being American made. I’ve sold a lot of furniture to people that used to be stickley fanatics. Once they saw that they switched their factories to Vietnam they swore to never buy stickley again and that’s a real shame.
Stickley’s switch to overseas production shows that they are not as in touch with their customer base as they should be.
Author: admin, October 5, 2008
Where back from the Indiana Amish furniture builders show!
The biggest new furniture style is called the Dyno-mission. It basically looks like an upside down McCoy style with exposed tenons.
Personally I’m on the fence about this style. In the lower units like plasma stands, occasional tables and even the dining room table it looks good but in the larger pieces like hutches, side boards, armoires, dressers and such it just doesn’t look right. I think they would look better if the angle were smaller down to 4 or 5 degrees not 8 or 10 like you see.
Now there is also a leg version of this style in the occasional tables and chairs which to be honest I think is butt ugly.
Personal taste obviously comes into play but I just hate thos front legs. If you add an nice swept leg to the front instead of that big blocky thing I think you’ve got a chair that is really good looking and comfortable. When I sat in it I almost bought one for the floor because it’s so comfortable but that ugly leg stopped me.
As for tables and chairs there where a whole bunch new designs that really looked good. The only problem is that the builder of the chairs that match the tables doesn’t want his chairs sold on the internet any longer. This is unfortunate because he is going to loose a lot of business that more than likely will never return to him. I know I sold about $100,000 worth of his chairs last year. I’m now working on finding a replacement builder for the styles he makes.
There was also a bedroom furniture builder and desk builder that followed suit. This really unfortunate for consumers because it limits your choices. The desk builder is the best I have ever seen his quality and craftsmanship is second to none and they will no longer be available to you unless there is a local store that has them. The same goes for the bedroom furniture and the chairs.
This is one of the areas that gets really frustrating when working with the Amish. They have no understanding of how much work, time and money it takes to develop and run a website, let alone get it into position to be found for the furniture they build. These builders have just about killed several family run businesses unless they can find alternate sources for this furniture. It’s actually sickened to see that they really don’t care about these families and their livelyhood. I know of one family that is supporting 6 kids with their website.
While I’m not a big fan of the internet only websites that sell Amish furniture I understand the lure of doing it. No overhead, typically they run them from their basement or kitchen table, very flexible hours and a few other perks. But they also have a lot of headaches that retail stores only don’t have like shipping and any damage that occurs. The cost of shipping is ridiculous and the person shipping the furniture typically takes a major hit to the profit margin just to ship the furniture to the customer. I work in both worlds as about half of my business is on the internet. With this change in policy my business is going to take a major hit and the Amish that enacted it just don’t care about the lost revenue. Kinda like chopping off your nose to spite your face if you ask me. Oh well there are a lot of builders out there that would love to pick up extra business.
I have 40 chairs on my floor made by the builder that doesn’t want his stuff sold on the internet. Since he’s decided that half of the business I do doesn’t matter I think I’ll replace his chairs and never sell them again. Gonna be hard to replace though. On the bright side I wont have to deal with his ever increasing quality issues. That’s a plus!!!
Author: admin, October 5, 2008
Today me and my wife leave for the 2008 builders show. WOOHOO(!?!?)
. Dont get me wrong it’s nice to see the builders again and of course all the new furniture they have created. But from the perspective of a city dweller and a non-Amish person Amish country is, to put it kindly, boring. Everything shuts down early, 10 pm is as late as it gets. The movie theater is about a year behind on it’s “new releases”. The most hoppin’ place in town is walmart!! LOL! The greatest thing about trying to get around indiana Amish country is the way the roads are laid out. If you’re used to it it’s fine. But those of us that are used to roads being named rather than numbered and having the cardinal directions added it gets confusing!!
To give you an example, you’ll find streets like ## west 200 south or #### east 450 north. To make this even more fun you’ll run into the same road number and address in the next county! Woohoo!! You really have to pay attention down there or you’ll get lost quick. Throw in narrow back roads, semi’s and truck blazing through, wandering livestock, Amish riding their bikes and the occasional Amish buggy & it’s a regular riot driving around down there.
I have to say overall a trip to Amish country is a nice break from the hustle and bustle of everyday life for me and my wife though. Plenty of time to catch up on some sleep & reading.
This year were going to bring back bunches of pictures and a complete review of the B&B were staying in. We were surprised to find that the prices for the B&B are comparable to those of the major hotel chains so we thought we’d give it a try. Should be interesting.