Where the Magic Happens

The Workshop

Our shop and studio is located on a 13 acre farm in Schwenksville, PA, about 30 miles northwest of center city Philadelphia.  The workshop is open and airy with plenty of natural light.  We are equipped with all we need to make anything from wood and have made just about everything, even automobiles.

The shop is full of workbenches, woodworking machinery and a vast array of the machinery and hand tools we use in creating your furniture. We house a collection of lumber inventory both inside the shop as well as in the barn above our show room.

We also operate a woodworking school on premises, where we train woodworkers from around the world.  Visit our school at www.jdlohrschoolofwoodworking.com

The Sawmill

Our sawmill on premises gives us remarkable control in our furniture making.  Most especially in our live edge work, we can saw a log to produce a shape that is the most functional, beautiful and ergonomic.  These choices allow us to create furniture from the very outset. 

Our bandsaw mill is a stationary saw, in which we move the log to the saw carriage.  Our Alaskan chain saw mill is a portable mill, that allows us to take the saw to the log.  This is essential for large scale, wide slabs.  The combination of these two tools allow us to cut lumber of all sizes.

The wood we cut at the sawmill is saturated with water from the living tree.  To use this material in furniture it must dry for years.  The process begins by air drying the material.  This takes much longer than commercial kiln drying, but like most things our patience is rewarded.  Air drying lumber preserves the rich, natural color tones in our material.  Commercial steam kilning cooks the color out of the wood, making it more homogenous and dull.  It breaks our heart to see walnut that has been steam kilned.  This process adds considerably to the time and labor involved, but the fruits of that labor are readily apparent in a finished piece of furniture.

After the material air dries for a year, we move it into our solar kiln to finish the drying process.  A solar kiln is a great way to dry material as it follows the cycle of nature.  The kiln will slowly heat up during the day, and slowly cool down at night.  This gives the material a relaxed drying process.

The Showroom