|
A Quick Look at the Art of Amish
Furniture Making
This brief summary about the
Amish furniture manufacturing processes and practices is based in part on our personal
observations over a couple of decades, as well as: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish_furniture.
In our interactions with the
Amish, we have seen that, because of their beliefs about being disconnected
from dependence directly on worldly sources, they use a gas or diesel-powered
generator to produce some DC and some AC electricity and air compression and/or
vacuum and hydraulic pressure sources.
So their shops are never
connected to the electrical utility in their town or village.
Some groups use long shafts
under the floor with pulleys that have a belt that supplies motive power to the
connected machines. Others use hydraulic or air power, or even electrical
power that is generated locally to power their machines.
The core idea behind handcrafting
is to begin by selecting wood that meets the individual Amish craftsman’s critieria
for beauty and durability in the finished furniture piece. The grain, the type
of hardwood and way it will be assembled and machined and even the choice of
stain, are all factored into the choices the Amish craftsman makes.
Even relatively small pieces
of wood that might be the leg of a chair for example, are always made from
individual pieces of hardwood lumber that are pressure glued together and then
machined and shaped to the final form.
This is particularly
important in the case of large flat hardwood lumber surfaces, which are
cleverly put together from boards so as to alternate the curvature of the
original tree in an alternating pattern. That is an immense skill that is
perhaps most present in the Amish furniture making community.
Hardwood lumber left outside
in its natural form or in area of excessive moisture, will try to go back to
the curve of the tree from which it was created – it warps!
Unfinished lumber is
particularly vulnerable to such warpage, so the process of sealing and staining
and top coat protecting such furniture with very modern stains and
polyurethanes is often done by Amish shops who only do this "finishing”, as it is
called locally.
In some cases, very complex
shapes will be cut to form using Computer Controlled Machines that are powered
with electricity from the Amish-owned generator.
The parts that make up a
finished piece of Amish furniture are often made by several Amish workers in
their own individualized shops and brought together in a final Amish assembly
shop to be prepared for finishing.
It is important to note, that most of the Amish do not use the Internet to directly sell their products. That is most often done by non-Amish families such as ourselves, that visit the shops and publish photos of specific items and then work with the general public to take their orders on the Internet or over the 'phone. We then hand deliver the orders to the Amish, and in our case, pick them up when finished completely to be prepared for shipping by another Amish family.
| 
