Comment by orwin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by orwin | Hacker News Reader

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All woodworkers are not carpenters. Also to make furniture you need tools, expensive ones. Some coop exists (i've seen one in Ohio) to help independant carpenters do "built-in" furniture (especially planning the wood), but most of the time it's company material they use.

Also, in the US (at least west appalachia, but it might be all of north america), it seems that the logging/milling industry has incestuous relationships with the building industry, and it seems to be pretty hard to find cheap wood from clearcuts if you're an independant. The person who hosted me and my familly for two weeks in WV used wood he logged himself for his home and dependencies (he was 70 btw), but even for a contract he got he couldn't use the wood from the nearby mill and imported it from Ohio/Canada. And it was in 2018 so there weren't as many pressure on wood availability as post-covid or right now.

> Some coop exists (i've seen one in Ohio) to help independant carpenters do "built-in" furniture (especially planning the wood)

In EU aa lot of in-built furniture is made out of "furniture board", it's particle board with some veneer. There are a lot of local companies selling that board, you can order already cnc cut and drilled pieces, you just need to specify drilled holes positions and sizes and you can offer custom furniture. Buy some off-the shelf fasteners and you're ready to go. Made a small library shelf this way for myself and it was 2x cheaper than anything ready made, but looks perfectly profeessional. My local carpenter friend orders at the same company, made me a kitchen much cheaper than anything available at big retailers.

Well of course producing your own wood would be cheaper than paying market rate. Lumber growers are a business too, they grow where it’s cheap and ship to market that pays best. A local guy not getting it for a discount isn’t incestuous, it’s capitalism working as intended.

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