wood shop

wood shop

A graduate of Maine College of Art, where she studied woodworking and design, Olivia began her professional woodworking career on the East Coast. She honed her skills on several challenging projects, including building a house in Maine. On an island. In the winter. While living in Massachusetts.

We figured this was pretty good training for understanding how climate can affect wood furniture (among other things!), and were very excited when Olivia joined our team two years ago.

Olivia our featured Joinery builder

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Looking to get your table spruced before the holidays – and possibly to impress your family and friends by steaming out a dent with an iron? Then our Joinery Furniture Repair and Maintenance seminar is for you. Our Finish team will be offering a Furniture Repair and Maintenance seminar loaded with helpful tips on the care of Joinery furniture. This seminar will feature general Feed-N-Wax application, how-to’s on repairing water rings, and the most fun part: steaming out dents with an iron.

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*UPDATE 7/31/17 Our summer tours are now complete. If you would like to be notified when we have our next tour series please contact us at [email protected].

The Joinery is offering tours of our wood shop this summer. Come see how our master craftspeople build beautiful handcrafted furniture, from initial cutout to signing the completed piece. This is a great Portland experience for out of town guests, woodworking enthusiasts, or those just curious about our process.
 

Our annual Metamortise contest is here, where we resurrect scraps of lumber from previous furniture builds and transform it into creative furniture and accessory designs.  Last year brought more than a dozen innovative and beautiful designs ranging from games, lighting, artwork and of course multiple furniture designs.  This year we are partnering with Sabin-Schellenberg Professional Technical High School students, who are also creating pieces out of leftover lumber that we have provided them.

 

Metamortise Bed

 

From 2.00-4.00 on Saturday, April 22 – Earth Day – we are hosting an event at The Joinery to see all the pieces and vote on for your favorites. To RSVP for the event click here. We will also hold a silent auction on the pieces submitted by the students, with all proceeds going back to the Sabin-Schellenberg Professional Technical High School.

By voting either online here or in our Woodstock showroom you can help crown the winning entries in this year’s contest, and be entered to win the piece of your choice. See photos of all the entries below.

Woodworking has been in Mecheal’s blood for as long as he can remember. His father owned a furniture manufacturing facility and store in Damascus, Syria, and Mecheal first began helping out in the summers when he was about ten. He began working full time after his high school graduation.

The first piece he remembers completing all on his own was a custom bed. The furniture designs in Syria were much more ornate than we build, including a lot of texture and carving. Mecheal continually developed his skills and eventually took over the leadership of a building team. He worked in his father’s shop until he came to the US in 2008, and has worked at The Joinery since that time.

Featured Builder Mecheal

Mecheal loves the precision of the dovetail joint, and the rich beauty of Western Walnut, but is not wedded to a particular style or wood species. Instead he loves the variety of pieces that he works each month, and the challenge of the custom pieces that continually come his way.

Although Mecheal is accomplished at both Beds and Chairs, he is not one to spend time relaxing, at least while he is at work. At home has a small shop, and enjoys spending time with his family, which is about to get bigger with his wife pregnant with their second child.

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His love started on stage, but over time his passion for woodworking shifted from props to one-of-a-kind pieces that families would enjoy for generations.

Michael’s first experience in woodworking was helping to bring a set designer’s vision to life for stage productions while in college back in New York. When he moved to the Pacific Northwest, he followed his love of the theatre by building sets for Portland Center Stage performances. While bringing a new world to life on stage brought him joy, he wanted to shift into building pieces with a longer life span. Initially, he honed his skills by working from a shop at home to create pieces for his friends. Eventually he presented his portfolio to The Joinery and came on board in 2007.

 

Michael: the hands behind the craft at The Joinery

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Even Mozart must have started by pecking out a few piano chords. When Hilario joined us ten years ago, his woodworking knowledge was limited to the hammer-and-nail nitty-gritty of construction carpentry. Then he came to work in The Joinery’s finish department, and over a number of years accumulated the skills and demonstrated the aptitude for the million-and-one details required to build incredible handcrafted furniture — the idiosyncrasies of each wood species, the tools, the joints, cut lists, custom design . . . .

Featured Builder at The Joinery

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wood shop

Was it nature or nurture that inspired Kelsey, our first recruit this spring to The Joinery’s Woodworker Apprentice Program, to follow her passion for creating beautiful wood furniture?

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In July Robin, our Shop Foreman, celebrated his 20-year anniversary with us. He’s legendary in these parts as “The Chair Guy” for his particular finesse building those most complex pieces of furniture. As one of his compatriots said, it goes to show that like the furniture we build, quality lasts and lasts. Yeah, we may still give him grief. We’re as apt to call him “Ruban” or “Rubinsky” or “Bobarino” as his real name — but these days, “Bobarino, Sir!” is always implied.

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Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc. (OTI) begins with the premise that there are tremendous opportunities open to women within the trades -- from electricians and millwrights to cabinetmakers -- especially when they have access to great education, representation, and advocacy.

That's what brought them to our premises last month, on the invitation of Angela Wright, one of our skilled builders and an energetic volunteer teacher at OTI. Their group toured our wood shop, spent time with our craftspeople, and had an engaging session with CEO Jon Blumenauer.

Over the years, The Joinery has turned many an aspiring apprentice into a master woodworker; in the future we fully expect more talented women to join those ranks. As part of our effort to encourage that coming to pass, we recently donated a part of our hardwood inventory to the OTI-supported Girls Construction Club at Wilson High School -- the raw materials from which we hope to help build some beautiful careers.

Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc. Tour

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