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» Chris Sharp Cabinets & the environment
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If you've ever driven across France and Germany you cannot fail to
notice the vast tracts of oak and beech forest, these tall straight
trees have been planted and replanted over the past centuries for
furniture, cooperage and other myriad uses. Only now when harvesting
and replanting do we appreciate the role these majestic sentinels
play in our ecology. Billions of small leaves are presented to the
sky absorbing sunlight that would otherwise be reflected up and then
down again from gases such as CO2 in the upper atmosphere (the
greenhouse effect), using the aforementioned sunlight these leafs
work their biochemical magic to transform millions of tons of
Europe CO2 into sugars, the trees cambium layer then turn those
sugars into beautiful utilitarian timber.
In the USA the increase in fossil fuel emissions is similarly
mitigated, with the hardwood forest area having increased by 18% in
the last 50 years and the volume of standing hardwood in those
forests has increased by a whopping 90%.
The stunning and valuable American black walnut and American black
cherry are not, as commonly believed a by-product of the fruit and
nut industry but are in fact part of the above mentioned diverse
largely re-grown forestry system.
Having chosen oak, walnut, cherry and beech from a responsible
source it would hardly be environmentally friendly to use only the
longest widest knot free timber to make relatively short furniture
components when the optimising and defecting technology exists to
get a better yield of knot free cabinet parts using all the grades
of wood (the timber between knots is often the most interesting), it
would be rather like buying a pig and using only the tenderloin!
Here at Chris Sharp Cabinets we believe that forestry should thrive
and that the resulting timber should economically benefit local
economies, we have chosen our timber partners with this in mind,
being a small workshop has not stopped us investing in the very best
optimising and defecting system this has allowed us to use a fair
cross section of grades to achieve minimal waste and incredible
quality, only the knots and other defects are discarded.
In 2004 we invested in the latest British built wood fired
heating system from Ranheat and low energy wood shredder
from the German company Wiema, this allowed us to remove our
oil fired heaters, in the winter we combine shredded off
cuts and sawdust to heat the workshop and in when the
weather warms up the same residues go for the manufacture of
bio fuel heating pellets (the future of heating fuels we
think). |
Our planer shavings are highly valued as animal
bedding this in turn will end up as compost. I even use a few bags
of oak chippings to make our family delicacy the Tillbridge
kippered trout.
To get back to our pig analogy, we use everything but the squeak! |
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