What's Better....Handcrafted or Factory-made Furniture? 2/14/2012 9:22:00 AM Although I haven’t done it, I think if you asked people on the street that question, you’d get an overwhelming response indicating that handcrafted is better. If you asked the same question about airplane engines or computer chips, you’d probably get quite a different response. Wood products are associated with craftsmanship. The idea of handcrafted furniture inspires a romantic notion of an old time craftsman making one piece at a time by hand. However, if you asked people to be specific as to why that’s better, they’d be hard pressed to give a valid answer.
As woodworkers, we need to be sensitive to this type of customer perception and at the same time be able to manufacture our products profitably. If we plan to sell handcrafted products, what attributes of those products will contribute to this customer appeal? Some attributes that would help us are:
- attention to the wood grain
- a clean, simple construction utilizing solid wood where feasible
- exposed joinery such as dovetails or “pinned” mortise-and-tenons
- a natural looking finish
And how can we produce these attributes efficiently? The process can be broken down into the following steps for analysis:
- Design
- Wood selection
- Fabrication of parts
- Assembly
- Detailing
- Finishing
The design process must take into account both the appeal to the customer and the ability to produce the product profitably. The fabrication process needs to be analyzed to see how to incorporate each attribute most efficiently. Each step in the process is then tested to see the impact on productivity.
Wood selection is the most important as well as the most costly step in creating handcrafted furniture. Wood itself is what distinguishes woodworking from industries that produce homogenous products. Each piece of wood is unique and how we arrange these pieces on a piece of furniture, millwork or cabinetry makes that product either more appealing or less appealing. Well planned wood selection makes the most out of wood’s unique characteristics. Poorly planned wood selection forces us to hide unappealing defects and mismatches. The process of hiding these defects diminishes the overall appearance of the product and gives it a drab factory-made look that’s so prevalent in furniture and cabinetry today.
The method used in fabricating parts, in general, neither adds to nor detracts from a hand crafted look. Therefore, this step should be automated as much as possible. The use of computer controlled machinery makes part fabrication more precise and far more cost effective to produce. If you don’t have this capability, consider buying out part fabrication. Just be sure all woods used are a good match.
Most assembly is accomplished by hand mainly because that’s the most practical method. However, the design of factory made wood products is often altered to allow for inaccuracies either in machining or assembly. These alterations tend to create a more muddled appearance. One example is to create steps or reveals between joined parts in order to disguise misalignment. Another is to use overlay doors and drawer fronts widely spaced on face frames in order to avoid situations where precise fitting is necessary. The use of these techniques detracts from the handmade look.
Detailing is a subtle but necessary step in the process. It’s also labor intensive. In order to get the most out of the wood we’ve selected, thorough sanding is a must. Any evidence of machine tooling should be eliminated from the surface in the process.
Finishing is where we can enhance the look that we’ve achieved in the previous steps. Typically, the most outstanding attribute of handcrafted furniture is the beauty of the wood itself. It would seem that this means more work in finishing than for factory made furniture. However, if we’ve done a good job of wood selection and detailing, finishing may actually be less work. We should have fewer defects to hide and, therefore, shouldn’t have to utilize as many finishing techniques to hide them. Often, a natural looking finish is desired on this type of work and that can make finishing even easier. So, the additional cost of careful wood selection and detailing is partially offset by a less demanding finishing schedule.
As we can see from this illustration, the difference between hand crafted furniture and factory made furniture is not based on the size of the shop but on marketing, design and methodology. Automation and efficiency need to be incorporated wherever possible to make production viable.
Handcrafted furniture has been growing in popularity recently, evidence of which can be seen by a search on the internet. Opportunities will undoubtedly continue to grow in this market niche as the economy improves.
