As custom furniture makers, we are in contact with several local suppliers of hardwood products. Whenever we take on a new project, we work with our suppliers to get the type(s) of wood we need. It might be a live edge slab, an exotic hardwood, an old-growth hardwood, or a species of wood that isn’t readily available in Southern California.
Recently, one of our local hardwood suppliers who specialized in wood from the Midwest decided that he was going to close his business. He has another business in a completely different industry, and wanted to focus on that one, so he was liquidating his supply of wood slabs. He contacted us to see if we would be interested in making a bulk purchase.
We jumped at the opportunity to acquire some great slabs at good prices that we could then turn into some great pieces of custom furniture for our clients in Temecula, Murrieta, and Menifee!
As we were looking at the slabs our supplier had available, we were able to get a little bit of the history behind them. According to our supplier, all of the slabs were cut by the Amish. They were then transported to a centralized hub, where they made available to wood suppliers from all over the country. Our local supplier purchased many, many slabs and then transported them on large trailers to Southern California, where he would resell them to independent woodworkers and furniture builders like us.
After seeing what he had available, we decided to buy out our supplier’s entire stock of wood slabs! We were able to acquire multiple large slabs of Missouri Black Walnut, Elm, Ash, and Spalted Maple, among other types—all from the Midwest. In case you aren’t familiar with Spalted Maple, this type of wood comes from a Maple tree that had a type of fungus that causes the wood to have unique lines in it. It’s not a type of wood that appeals to everyone, but we think it looks really cool and can enhance just about any custom furniture design!
We are excited to now have a large supply of great slabs of wood that we can use on projects for our clients! If you are interested in having a custom furniture piece built for your home, send us a message. We can send you photos of what we have or arrange for a time that you can come see what we currently have in stock. Of course, if we don’t have exactly what you’re looking for in our shop, we can almost certainly acquire it from one of our other local wood suppliers. We look forward to hearing from you!