Village Squire, 1979-04, Page 17Bill Wallace works on a bench for a trestle table set in the workshop at Maitland Woodworking.
be all that good but now they're beginning to visit the shop more.
People seeking reproduction furniture cross all professional
and age groups the brothers say. Mostly they are people who
have in mind a theme for a room: people who perhaps want a
cannonball bed to match a dresser that they picked up at an
auction or such and can't find exactly what they want anywhere
else.
Many people like to do their own finishing these days and
more of the furniture is going out in the white from the shop.
Getting proper wood for the furniture making is a major
problem. Costs have risen greatly for wood. It can now cost
$1250 for 1000 board feet of kiln dried pine. and much more for
hardwoods. The brothers are working on a scheme to try to cut
those costs. They purchased a building at the Plowing Match last
year and are in the process of erecting it to serve as a
solar -powered drying kiln. The building can hold about 16.000
board feet of lumber. It will then be shut and heat and moisture
will be controlled. Heat will be provided by solar collectors which
will collect the sun's warmth and the air will be circulated
through the lumber. The only data they have for planning such a
building comes from the southern U.S. where heat and moisture
:onditions are considerably different but they feel sure they can
make it work. Their banker, Bob jokes, is not so sure. He's
nervous.
If it does work it can be a big benefit to the shop. While dried
pine costs $1250 per 1000 board feet. green pine can be
purchased for only $400 per 1000 board feet, about one third the
cost. When it comes to hardwoods the kiln will be even more
valuable because hardwoods such as walnut. maple. oak and
cherry are not only expensive. but nearly impossible to find in
most lumber dealers.
They can find local sources of hardwood and can pay to have it
sawn up, but they have to find a way of drying it and most kiln
operators won't touch a job unless it involves large quantities.
What the Wallaces hope to do is provide a service not- only to
themselves but to others seeking "exotic" hardwoods since the
kiln they are building will hold much more wood than they
require for their own use.
A growing trend too in their business is for people to bring
them wood to make into furniture. On the shop floor at the
moment is a cedar trestle table made from wood brought in by a
man who has just sold his farm but wants to have something that
was from that farm so cut a cedar and brought it in.
Bob describes the cost of furniture from Maitland
Woodworking versus that of a larger production house of
reproduction furniture as "about nip and tuck." "We don't have
the overhead that they do, but then again we don't have the
production run that they do, so I think we're about neck and
neck. We can do some items considerably cheaper than they can,
but other items that they're running about 200 off, we can't
touch them at all for price. But we can offer something that suits
you to a tee where the bigger outfits just can't. If you don't like
what they've got in a showroom then they can't just change a
production line to make one piece for you. That's precisely what
we do: make a piece for you."
That's the kind of service one used to find a century ago in
little villages like Fordwich all over Ontario. It's something that
was lost in the urge to bigger production factories for many
years. Luckily. today the opportunity for something truly unique
has returned again.
April 1979. Village Squire 15