Why Amish Furniture Makers Use Hardwood
Maybe I missed something in science class ‘way back in grade school, but today I learned something about fine furniture that was so interesting I just had to write about it. I’m sitting in my dining room full of Amish furniture, perched on my beautiful solid oak dining chair with a seat that’s upholstered in luscious deep brick red leather.
I’m writing in a notebook on my round oak Amish dining table with a big cup of coffee by my side. Outside my window I see some oak trees and find myself thinking about how other oak trees were cut down and transported to a lumber mill to make boards used to build this beautiful Amish dining set for me. So, I got on the web and to study Amish furniture making because I just wanted to know how it works.
Well, the first thing I learned about furniture making has to do with the selection of trees, meaning that solid wood furniture started out as either a hardwood or a softwood tree once upon a time. I was fascinated to read the reasons why hardwoods make better furniture, the reason that my Amish dining set is made from an oak tree. Here’s a summary, a list having some exceptions, but true in most cases:
First, hardwoods are the “deciduous” trees that lose their leaves every year, such as hickory, maple, oak, walnut, ash, cherry, poplar, birch and aspen. Softwoods, then, are the “evergreen” trees with needles, such as pine, cedar, spruce, fir and larch.
Hardwoods require a longer growing period and forests are located in both the northern and southern hemispheres of the globe. Softwoods require fewer years to mature to harvest size, and they grow almost exclusively in the northern hemisphere.
Because of the annual growth cycle and the longer life span to maturity, deciduous trees are heavier and denser, resulting in a harder surface, and evergreen trees are lighter and somewhat more porous, which is why the two different types are called hardwoods and softwoods.
This explains why lumber from hardwood trees is the most desirable. Also, hardwood forests have been over-harvested and all the species are becoming scarce, making them all more expensive than the softwoods which are more readily available and cheaper.
The real difference between hardwood and softwood can be seen though a microscope, which shows called “vessel elements” in the hardwoods. These are special cavities carrying water and nutrients through a growing tree. Hardwoods have larger tubes allowing more food and moisture to travel throughout the whole tree, giving them an advantage over the evergreen trees.
So, maybe we’ve had quite enough of this science lesson for today… But now I know why my Amish furniture is so sturdy and why Amish craftsmen only choose hardwoods when they select lumber for high quality sets like mine.
If you want to see more pieces like my Amish oak dining table and chairs, and you want to see samples of the hardwoods used by Amish furniture makers, visit http://www.amishfurniturefactory.com/amish-furniture-information.html to see what I’m talking about. I’ll bet you’ll fall in love with it, too!
About the Author
Writing, blogging and training small business owners, Mia works wonders in cyberspace from a laptop in her cabin in the woods where she also loves to sew and craft folk art when she’s not writing or consulting (or walking by the lake). Her specialty is posting delightful customer photos and testimonials, writing targeted articles to attract search engines and boosting new writers and bloggers with a shot of pure confidence during private phone consultations.
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