First of all I thank you for your kind words about my work. I didn’t really set out to become a shaker woodworker but I find myself attracted to the elegance that comes of simplicity. I plan on tackling some mission-style builds in the not too distant future as well.

I’ve been considering what values I’d want to run a furniture shop under, and here are a few I’ve got:

I don’t want to use exotic foreign timber in my work. What business do I have shipping birch, ebony and mahogany from the other side of the planet when I’m surrounded by oak, walnut and cherry? I live in a forest, my work need not involve a container ship and a trans-Atlantic voyage’s worth of bunker oil.

Even then I would like to use storm fallen or culled timber rather than farmed or clear cut. There’s a storm fallen white oak laying in my uncle’s lawn that I really need to haul off to the sawmill.

I would love to run my shop on rooftop solar and tell the power company to suck some of their coal ash back out of the Cape Fear.

And I would really like it if I could put my sawdust and small scraps to good use, even as stove fuel. I am aware that there are forests being torn down and the wood chipped and then sent by bulk cargo ship elsewhere in the world as “biomass fuel” because “lol not fossil fuels.” Which isn’t fucking great, to say the least. I would much rather find uses for what are otherwise waste products, like my sawdust.

I’m gonna play this a little closer to the chest but I also have similar ideas for exactly what furniture I build and how I build it.