Left to right: Flame Red Birch, Curly Maple, Flame Birch, Curly Black Walnut

The Woods We Use

We use only the top grade New England hardwoods for our work. A few reasons:

• We love the subtle colors and grain patterns of our local woods.
• We’re pleased that our raw materials have a small carbon footprint.
• We enjoy our lumber yard forays, climbing 3-story stacks of lumber, sorting through to find the finest-figured grains.

We also use some woods from Tom’s brother’s place in the Adirondacks. And we do use some local woods that we’ve collected, had sawn up at a neighbor’s mill, then air-dried—an inch a year. That’s a lot of work, a profession unto itself. We’d rather MAKE things.

Our major wood supplier is in line with our thinking and purchases only “quality timber from reputable foresters with clients enrolled in Vermont’s Land Use Program requiring sustainable harvest methods.

Yes, we KNOW all the wood types look the same! Check out the pigs and the bowls, then contact me. I'll point out what's what.

Birch

Most of us recognize the distinctive bark of a Paper Birch—white and curling. Inside, it’s honey-colored, and since it grows quickly, it has a wide grain—that’s the distance  between the growth rings . It’s among the softer of our hardwoods, tending  more to araised grain.  We love to use Flame Birch or its outrageous cousin, Flame Red Birch—they make everything look festive.  Robert Frost’s poem runs through my head as I work with this iridescent wood.

Cherry

Gets darker and richer red with age and exposure to air. If you’ve left something on a piece made of cherry,  you’ll often see a light patch where the object  was. Leave it exposed and usually it will blend back. Often we have luscious Curly varieties.

Maple

Maple is the hardest of our native North Eastern hardwoods—that’s why we  recommend it for daily, rugged use in cutting boards and cooking spoons. The grain is tight, showing slow growth. And besides the ever-practical, straight-grained Maple, we often get the following amazing figures. My YMCA’s gym floor is mostly Curly and Birds-eye Maple—perfect for the wear and tear, and great for meditation while stretching on a mat.

• Ambrosia Maple is a figure caused by the Ambrosia Beetle. The beetle has a reaction to the sap in the tree, then the brown and gray streaking is carried up and down with the sap, causing a wild figure, like frosting dripping around the edges.  Can have a Spalted look.
  
  
• Birds-eye Maple has long been prized by artisans and fine furniture makers, and lately can be seen in dashboards of Rolls Royce automobiles. We don’t know what causes this figure, but it looks fabulous in highly-elegant tableware and is especially fun as Champagne in a wine bottle or in fish themes (oven pulls or fish or whale cheese boards) -like bubbles.
  
  Curly Maple (also called Fiddleback, Tiger and Quilted for obvious reasons)  is totally necessary for the keyboard of our grand piano, and looks just right on all members of the Violin Family. Like Birds-eye, it’s fun in watery pieces.
  
  
• Spalted Maple is a perennial Maple favorite.  Mold gets out its artistic paintbrush and has a party in the wood grain. We don’t know till we start cutting what will show up. See Spalting above for more info.
  
  
• Waterdrop Maple  This is not Birds-eye, say the foresters, but for sure something is going on. We call it Waterdrop, because after it’s sanded and oiled, it looks like there’s a drop of water sitting on top. And the live edge is wonderful. Rare.

Mountain Laurel 

The state flower of Connecticut AND Pennsylvania, laurel was called Spoonwood by the Native Americans. Since we live in the center of thousands of acres of the stuff (it looks like pink clouds in May/June when they flower), we intend to use more of it. It grows very slowly (making a tight, barely visible grain), and takes on crookedy shapes when buried under fallen branches. What fun to follow the curves and make jewelry elements, small spoons, delightful drawer and door pulls, funky wall hooks and occasionally, unique vessels.

Black Walnut

A luscious dark wood ranging from smoky gray to rich ebony. Sometimes we get some wonderful wavy Curly. It works well as a grand piano, and makes a handsome pumpernickel “toast” board. Only the sawdust, nuts and the oil squeezed from them cause allergic reactions in some people.