Beech wood is a beautiful, modern, simple wood that will satisfy you in many scenarios…
Beech is an often overlooked wood. It sits in the shadows of maple (who boasts hard, minimal grain), and Alder (with its brownish-pink simple flowing grains and soft density). When it comes to simplicity, durability, and a understated (but visible) grain pattern, you just can’t beat Beech!
If Beech were a car, it’d be a BMW. It’s minimal, sleek, and very European. It has historically been used in Scandinavian furniture because it is strong and can bent and steamed well. It thrives in Europe and commonly carries the commercial names of European beech, or German beech. It is often used as a base in furniture because it is so strong and flexible.
As a finishing wood, it is a bit tricky since it has a very tight, closed grain, but not nearly as problematic as maple. It can be finished a myriad of ways, but the most effective, in my opinion, are oil stains that allow the slightly ribboned and tiny black flecked grain to be visible.
Machining beech is relatively problem free, it stands on the opposite end of course “straw grained” woods like hickory that blow out at random. It has dense, short grains that make it more porne to burning than anything else, but with good tools and relatively moderate speeds, it can be mastered fairly easily.
Beech wood is a very cost effective way to get a modern, minimalistic look. It costs no more than oak for a manufacturer though some may charge more because it is less popular. It lays in the same cost category as oak, ash, and most all other mid level woods. If you’re being up-charged for this wood, it’s probably because of a “market will bear it” mentality.
Beech wood is in my top 5 woods, it just has so many great attributes: wonderful simple grain, strength, durability, cost efficiency, availability, history, and more. Choose beech for your next “BMW” cabinet project!
You paid 1 gazillion for your cabinets, but how to clean cabinet doors, that is the question…
They reside in the most active and possibly dirtiest part of your house. They’re usually full of edges, profiles, cracks, crevices, recesses, and detail, which means you’ve got a high margin of probability that there is some sort of grime in there. How do you clean them? This is the woodworker’s side of the story. Cleaning cabinet doors is usually approached from the domestic, typically female, typically mom-passed down style of information. In this article I’m going to talk about how to clean them and take into consideration your type of finish and wood, we’ll talk about the long term plan for cleaning, not just quickly getting them to sparkle before the family comes over.
First things first, let’s assess your type of cabinet doors. Some are just easier to clean than others. Modern style cabinet doors are usually easier to clean than traditional style doors. Modern style doors typically have very minimal profiles, and very flat surfaces, mixed with high gloss thick finishes. Traditional cabinet doors typically have lots of profiles, more angles, and possibly gaping knot holes (in rustic versions). If you’re going into the buying process, keep this in mind: modern=clean and simple, traditional=depth and dirt.
Okay, let’s get down to business. This is really simple, here are your rules…
-Don’t use any abrasives (anything that will scratch the finish) to clean cabinet doors. Some finishes, especially the more environmentally friendly ones are not as durable as they should be. Furthermore, it’s common practice among some cabinet makers to skimp on finish to save themselves (and sometimes you) money, so just use a sponge.
-Don’t use harsh chemicals, for all the same reasons above. Use mild dish soap in warm water and cour cabinet doors will thank you.
-Don’t let the water stand or pool in the corners of the cabinet doors. Wood swells when it gets wet, and if you let it pool in a corner and your cabinet guy hasn’t sealed your door 100%, water will get into the grain and cause the wood to swell. If it does, your finish may crack and next time you clean you’ll repeat the process in a downward spiral. Make sure to work in a small area, wetting the sponge, cleaning the area, and then quickly drying with a towel and a cue tip in the corner of the detail.
-In doors with lots of detail, you’ll want to use a cue tip or point a paper towel into a spear and drag it along the sharp, small areas of the cabinet doors to get out the dirt. be extra careful that you don’t get water into doors that have knots, many manufacturers allow large knots that don’t get properly sealed, and therefore can act as a giant water collector in the middle of your door. Do these areas by hand using very little water.
-Apply elbow grease! As you can see, there’s no silver bullet, and it’s just going to take some work, but cleaning cabinet doors the right way will increase their life and enhance the look of your home for years to come. Don’t cut corners!
So, the age old dilema between two great woods: Alder vs maple cabinets.
What are the pros and cons to both woods and what should you choose? We’ll go over that and more as we explore these two beautiful and popular woods.
Let’s take a look at alder first…
History: The first thing you should know is that Alder is basically the modern replacement for birch. It grows primarily in the Northwest and was originally not much more than an annoyance to loggers. Over time, the woodworking industry has created a market for alder (and especially the rustic versions) as a way to promote a very inexpensive wood as a high end product.
Properties: Alder is the chameleon of the wood kingdom. A good finisher can make alder look like just about anything (including maple). Alder is very soft, and can easily scratch (in raw form) with a fingernail. Consequently, alder is very light, and somewhat bendable. It does tend to stay relatively true over time.
Price: Depending on who is selling you your cabinets, alder may be a premium, discount, or a base product. That’s the funny thing! Alder is so easy for woodworkers to work with, cheap to buy, and easy to make look great. So be careful when your cabinet salesman tries to sell you alder as an upgrade! Trust me, alder is a dream wood for a manufacturer!
Feel: Knotty alders can turn out a beautiful rustic product, while straight grain clear alders can turn out something more modern. Many industry professionals use clear alder as a paint grade product, since it is so easy to work with and a little heavier than poplar. Like I said earlier, alder is very versatile.
Now let’s look at maple…
Maple comes in a gazillion species from a gazillion regions, and therefore can be hard to compare apples to apples. Let’s assume we’re talking about the most common type: hard rock maple.
Properties: Maple is a hard, heavy wood. It’s durable, strong, and long lasting. Flooring and butcher blocks are made from the stuff for a good reason. It has a relatively white (with yellows, greys and pinks sometimes mixed in) tone, and the grains are nothing to write home about. Unless you go with a rustic version with plenty of mineral content, your maple will be just a building block, and not a statement of grain art! Additionally, maple doesn’t play very nicely with stain. It’s most popular finishes are either natural, or with a toner to give it some color.
Price: Maple is considerably harder to work with than alder, and has a tendency to burn easily and eat up knives in the shop, plus costs 2-3 times as much for the raw product. Maple is usually up there where it should be among the more expensive, usually under the super premiums like mahogany, and just under the mid to high end woods like cherry and walnut, but above the mid range woods like oak.
Feel: Since maple is relatively free of grain interest, it is usually at its best in painted or toner situations calling for high quality and specific color matching in more modern settings. The rustic colorful versions are great for country cabin type looks.
This isn’t the end of the maple vs alder discussion, but hopefully gives you a quick idea into these two woods and how you might apply them in your application.
To sum it up, if you:
-have a 5-10 year time table
-don’t have hellions for children
-don’t care about heavy stuff
-are getting a fair deal from your cabinet guy versus maple
Go with alder! You can do anything with it, it’s big bang for the buck!
But if you:
-have a 10-20 year time table
-have hellions for children
-like heavy things
-are willing to possibly sacrifice finish options
Then go with maple! It’s a classic, is strong, durable, and timeless!
I’m a drink snob (and an addict).
My wife gets upset at the cans of half-drank pop cans I leave everywhere. Why do I do it? A drink worth drinking is just under slush temperature, and room temperature quickly turns a good drink bad. You can put a drink on ice, which does the job of cooling it, but at the expense of dilution. A good drink isn’t diluted (I drink my drinks at restaurants really fast to combat this). Anyway, let’s get to the point… Here is THE solution:
We want to offer exceptional service when someone buys our custom cabinet door and cabinet boxes. Here is one method we employ to do so…
If you’re going to run a business, you’ve got to be connected to your customers, though sometimes that means dedicating a great deal of time away from your central product focus. We build custom cabinet doors and cabinet components, and that’s our passion. Starting out, customer service wasn’t a passion, but we have slowly realized that the more we focus on the customer, the better our products become.
So how do you communicate with customers without taking the focus off your core business? You use powerful tools. The internet has brought forth so many game changing phone options, we’d be crazy not to use them. In the not so distant past you’d have to spend upwards of $10,000 to have a professional sounding automated phone system, now it’s fast, easy, and economical. Here are just some advantages of switching from a traditional analog phone system from the old phone company to a new internet based phone system:
- Customers can find you anywhere, and they like that. Most internet phone systems come with apps, call forwarding, email forwarding, text alerts, and other tricks to get calls to you no matter where you are. On an old system, you have to be at the office to know who is calling.
- Menus allow customers to get where they want to be. As long as you actually answer the phone, the customer usually appreciates being able to quickly get where he wants to go.
- More tools allow you to customize the user experience. You can choose from almost limitless options to make phone calls land in the appropriate spot. No matter the size of your company and goal of customer service, you can customize your user experience.
- Lower costs for interstate and international calls. Distance doesn’t bother the internet as much as it does the phone company. You can save substantial amounts of money by switching.
- Analytics allow you to see call volumes, times, and help you plan for the future of your customer service experience.
The FSC certification program is designed to protect our earth against deforestation.
In a nutshell, it’s an organization that manages the impacts of using our forests to manufacture products wood. They make sure the long term stability and sustainability of wood are maintained. They track and certify the wood all the way through the process to ensure that the wood is being used responsibly.
So why would you want to be FSC certified?
- Many big projects now require it, especially government, and those with “green conscience” owners or contractors.
- You might get a warm fuzzy knowing you’re doing your part to protect the environment.
- You get a little name recognition, you can put the logo on your web site and tell everyone.
- If your customers are environmentally conscious, you may have an advantage over those who are not.
- The application process takes time and effort. (It depends on each shop how much time will be required.)
- You have to pay for the certification to take place. (It depends on each shop how much money will be required.)
- You may have to limit or change your product line and offerings. Certain things just don’t fly if you want the sticker.
- You may have to change your operations to comply.
- You’ll have to spend time with auditors, they’ll come to make sure you’re following the rules.
You can see how your custom cabinet doors and cabinet boxes will look using Google SketchUp…
It’s sometimes hard to imagine how a completely custom door will come together. It’s hard to see how the different door profiles will interact with each other. For this reason we have created a tool for you that helps. It uses google sketch up, which is an amazing and free tool. You’ll have to download it by clicking here, or on the icon in this post. After you download google sketch up, click here to download our door builder. You’ll have to unzip the file, using your favorite “unzipper”, after that, just click on the door builder icon and it will use google sketch up to open it. Use the layers to turn on and off the different profile options, and click on the fly around views at the top of the page to see different angles. If you’d like to learn more advanced features of google sketch up, click here. Google sketch up also supports warehouse files, the 3d warehouse is a great commons area for shared sketch up models, you can see it by clicking here. There are plenty of cabinet models in there, and plenty of people use it for laying out rooms, it’s worth taking a look.
We recently added a new flap wheel sander and would like to tell you why we did it.
We put quite a bit of research into this project and thought it might be useful for you to see. We wanted to take our custom cabinet doors to the next level, and quickly recognized our weakest point: the micro edges contouring every profile on our doors. We have since have proved what research suggests: To achieve the perfect sand, you have to machine flap wheel sand every edge. There are many alternatives to this, and admittedly, we have been employing them for years. They are, however, only substitutes, and a perfect finish cannot be achieved without the right equipment (or superhuman powers). If every edge on a door isn’t broken, your customer will notice sharper edges and your finish will have higher chances of flaking off, causing warranty visits and all kinds of replacement costs. Some of our competitors hand sand to break edges. Hand sanding may appear to get the job done, but leaves behind too many inconsistencies. In order to get the perfect sand, a person would have to apply the same amount of pressure, at the same angle, along varying short and long runs, over and over and over. It just isn’t economical or practical. Add to the fact that hand sanding runs the very common risk of a slip causing cross-grain marks in panels. Take a look at some pictures of some studies we did, they show a magnification of 10x at different points along the door.
This first set shows the contrast between two alder doors, the first one is hand sanded, and the second is machine sanded. These pictures were taken from the top corner of the comparison doors.
This next set illustrates the same doors at 4″ from the top
The results were very subtle at quick glance, but after a close look, we saw huge differences, ones that matter. In short, we were blown away with the difference, and purchased a Quickwood flap wheel sander. Here is some footage (not ours): Flap wheel sander for custom cabinet doors
Custom cabinet doors come it so many varieties, and it’s interesting to see which profiles are the most popular.
Some might surprise you, they did me. Keeping up on what people are wanting is a good way to stay on top of the game. Here is what our system shows are the most popular profiles, first up, the arch styles…
So square doors outsell everything, hands down. I thought is was interesting to see that Roman arch doors are by far the most popular doors when compared to other arches, outselling all the rest combined!
Next up, are the edges. This one isn’t too surprising. The good ‘ol “ogee” classic profile and square dominate.
It’s interesting that the stile and rail profiles are more spread out. Apparently since they are typically the smallest profile on the door…
Panels really surprised me. As you can see, 1/4″ veneer has surpassed the other profiles on the list, go back 3 years and it wasn’t anywhere even close. This may reflect the current housing crisis and the need for economical solutions. Our clientele hasn’t really changed in 3 years, we’re still building products for the same “high end” and “medium end” cabinet shops.
Alder dominates the wood category. As you can see, it makes up for over 40% of all our custom cabinet doors. I think woodworkers are influencing design, and that’s a very good thing. Alder is so easy to work with and finish, and is most woodworkers’ highest profit margin wood. It’s always funny for me when I see a (spec) house offering an upgrade (usually from oak) to alder. Hooray for alder! 
We’re starting a blog here at LCS. Why?…
- To give more than we take. By making this decision, it lets us give information. We think transparency is good, and giving is better. We want our customers (and whomever else) to benefit from our knowledge, however minuscule it might be.
- It’s a great way for us to informally stay connected to our customers. We love talking to our customers, but there just isn’t enough time to get out there and visit every single one. This way, we can talk to you, and if you so choose, you can talk back (via comments or email).
- Share cool things that we come across. Sometimes we come across something we think will help, and we want to share the wealth! We’ve always said that our customers’ success is our success, so we have a vested interest in making you successful. If we find something cool, we want you to at least know about it.
- To build trust. We want to sell lots and lots of custom cabinet doors and cabinet box components. To do that, we have to convince our customers what we already know ourselves: we are experts and damn good at what we do! Hopefully by writing down our bits of expertise and sharing it with the world, we’ll sell more custom cabinet doors!
- To learn from our customers. Our business is strongest when we listen to our customers. Our point of view is not the only one, and we know it. As you can see below, there is a comments section. We want hear from you when you have something to say! Tell us what you like and what you’d like even better!
- To have fun! Let’s face it, the world doesn’t revolve around cabinetry. We’re not always going to post about this industry, sometimes it will be about business in general, and every once in awhile it’ll be about something completely off the wall, and that’s fun.
