Andy Brownell

Andy has had a life-long passion for building things. Yankee ingenuity,
and a family history of antiques were fostered in his father's basement shop,
and then in high school wood class. He learned to appreciate and apply the finer
skills of furniture making through a weekend apprenticeship with Jeff Miller (J. Miller Handcrafted Furniture) in Chicago, IL. This eight year experience gave him an understanding of hand and power tools, but more importantly, nuance of design, and the attention to detail and finish needed in fine, hand-made custom furniture. In a world of mass-produced knock-offs and particle board junk, Andy has made it a personal mission to help his generation appreciate great furniture and eventually craft every piece of furniture in his home.

A Giant Loss in the Urban Forest

Aug 20

Written by: andy_blogger
8/20/2009 8:19 PM

How to Catch a Woodworker's Eye

On my way to play golf this week, I drove past a church just outside of downtown Cincinnati and found this sad reminder of how much wood is lost to ignorance and a lack of awareness around harvesting urban timber. The air was punctuated with a clear scent of freshly cut oak and there were actually two massive white oak trees that had been cut down and hauled away, save for the enormous stumps. These trees were removed perhaps because of their size and potential risk to the nearby buildings and the people living nearby, or disease, which is certainly understandable. I have to imagine that these stumps weighed at least 500-600 lbs. a piece.

There were at least 15-20 individual chunks from the main run of the trees cut to about 3 feet in length. Some of them were well over 40-50" in diameter. I took a photo of my golf umbrella next to one here for some perspective of size. I counted between 120-150 rings on two different pieces. That placed these trees being planted sometime around the same time the chimes on Big Ben rang for the first time. Clearly dwarfing my car in mass, I can only imagine how much useful wood these two trees could have yielded for some great mission style furniture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earlier this week, I began to seek out local sawyers in my area with the help and direction from some of the folks at Popular Woodworking and Woodmizer (who manufacturers portable sawmills). I'll keep you posted on what I can find.

 

 

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