Harden Furniture, Complete craftsmen

Manufacturing in Action, Source : The Manufacturer US

Harden Furniture marries traditional craftsmanship to modern techniques in producing high-quality furniture for businesses and homes, Iain Mckay reports.

There is nothing like top-quality wood furnishings, whether in the home or at the office. But although wood is durable and adaptable, it's easy to ruin during the manufacturing process, and getting the best out of nature's bounty is a job for experienced craftspeople working with sympathy for their material.

Harden Furniture can count itself among the pick of the crop. Established by Charles Harden in 1844 and now based in McConnellsville, New York, it was originally a logging and lumbering operation building bridges over the Erie Canal and for the Erie and Western Railroad. The logging and bridge building season was restricted to the warmer part of the year, so during the winter months, the company's workers turned to furniture production and began making the Windsor chair. As the years passed, the furniture operation grew in importance: it's a long time since Harden built a wooden trestle bridge for a railroad company.

Whenever possible, companies like to control all elements of their supply chain, especially raw materials. As the company expanded, Harden began buying woodlands and now owns over 25,000 acres in upstate New York. Owning its own woodlands makes Harden unique. It can maintain an ample supply of predominantly cherry and maple sawlogs without compromising the environment-and it can be sure that it is getting the best available because it has been tended, farmed, and harvested under the close supervision of its own foresters. Nor is quality threatened at the sawmill because Harden owns kilns and mills that together can handle over six million board-feet of lumber per year.

Building a Harden executive desk, conference table, reception area, dining table, or upholstered set of lounge furniture takes 50 to 60 years. That's how long a high-quality hardwood tree takes to reach maturity from seed. It's still shorter than Mother Nature manages; left to her own devices, her crowded forests and tangled underbrush would add another 30 to 40 years. Harden's foresters manage the woodland on a 20-year cycle, removing trees that have reached maturity and would crowd out younger saplings, thinning out diseased or congested growth, and making sure the trees have the optimum space to reach their potential. Its overall management program recognizes and incorporates environmental and recreational benefits to water and wildlife. Careful management maximizes the yield from each stand of timber, ensuring supply from generation to generation.

Harden furniture is made from mostly cherry or maple. But don't think the company is cutting down trees that could be providing fruity treats for kids: the prunus serotina or black cherry trees produce wonderful wood for furniture, with a beautiful grain and texture, but the cherries they bear are hardly worthy of the name. They are small, black, and completely inedible.

Once the tree has achieved just the right maturity, there is still a lot of time, craftsmanship, and inspection to go through before it reaches the customer. Foresters select the trees to be harvested and grade each log by size, quality, and number of natural defects. They are stacked, stored, and sent, as necessary, to the sawmill for processing into usable lumber. The sawmill processes each log through several stages, removing bark and twigs and cutting the log down to produce usable lumber-avoiding the central heartwood, which is the most likely part to have defects. Throughout the process, defective boards and wood scraps are removed and either forwarded to other wood product manufacturers or sent to the furnace to be used as fuel. All the wood that has passed and is acceptable to Harden is then stacked to allow air drying, which takes the moisture content down to 20% to 30%. Next, it is moved to the dry kiln where, at temperatures of 130F to 160F, depending on humidity, the moisture content is reduced to 5-7 %. After the boards pass through a stratoplaner that planes them smooth, the moisture level is checked again: wet wood warps, and the moisture checks make sure that Harden furniture doesn't.

Knots and splits are identified and marked by eye, and a computer-controlled optimizer saw scans and cuts each board for optimal use. The rip saw station cuts each board to width, and board selection specialists group them for consistent grain and color. These are glued and clamped together to create panels that are sorted by size and color. When an order is received, all elements-especially leaves for dining tables-are matched for consistent grain and color. Table edges are cut by a state-of-the-art CNC router, and legs are hand-turned and shaped on lathes. Machined table tops are matched to the other components, and the item goes through the first of six inspections that will check each stage of the 21-step finishing process, which involves sanding, toning, a wiping glaze, coloring, sealing, lacquering, drying, and air-curing. The final steps are Oakley Rubbing for consistency and sheen and hand waxing. The final product is shipped in one of Harden Furniture's 30 trailers to a dealer in the US or Ontario, Canada.

Harden Furniture wants its customers to get the best out of its high-quality furnishings; it has put a lot of time into them. Each item carries a tag signed by the main craftspeople involved in its production and a short handbook on furniture care. It's worth a quick read to make sure the 50 to 60 years that went into making the product aren't wasted!

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