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Helping Folks Branch Out

January 2, 2004 1:07 am

Rick Berry had a special place in his heart for the big hardwood trees around his grandmother's house.

At age 11, he stood under a black walnut, smiling in a family photo. As he grew up, the sturdy red and white oaks in the yard off U.S. 17 in southern Stafford County, provided shade and the backdrop for reams of memories.

So when it came time to sell the place he bought nine years ago after his grandmother passed away, he wanted to take some of the trees with him.

Uprooting them was not an option, so he settled on the next best thing: Saw them up and use the oak for custom flooring and the poplar for trim for a house he's building at Fawn Lake in Spotsylvania County. Lumber from the walnut tree will make a hope chest for his 16-month-old daughter, Addie.

"I'm married, with a family of five, now," Berry, 46, said in a recent interview. "Watching those big trees made me think of making them into something for my new home. I always knew I was going to do something with [them]."

That was easier said than done. He'd need a furniture maker and a custom-milling shop to make it happen.

That's where Curtis Fitzgerald and William Jewell entered the picture.

Berry called Fitzgerald, owner of J.C. Forest Products in Massaponax, which specializes in custom molding, flooring and trim. Fitzgerald called Jewell, a furniture maker and woodworker with his own portable sawmill, and the three worked out a deal to translate Berry's nostalgia into reality.

Jewell, owner of American Logworks, cut the trees and sawed them into boards. Fitzgerald is having the wood dried at a lumber company in Culpeper. When it's ready in nine to 12 months, he'll run it through his shop to create the custom woodwork.

Jewell saw Berry's request as an opportunity to fill a niche in the furniture business here.

There are many like Berry who want to save a piece of the old homeplace when they leave. Others who lose big, old trees--thousands of them were felled during Hurricane Isabel--would rather use them for something special instead of burning the wood or having a contractor haul it to the dump.

"This way, people can use it for their own house, crafts or whatever," Jewell said. "There's a lot of beautiful wood out there."

Jewell, 41, who lives in Triangle and plans to build a house in Spotsylvania, has been making specialty furniture in the style of George Nakashima since 1995. Nakashima, a master craftsman who died in 1990, used hardwoods with natural finishes to create unusual, free-style pieces. He created a distinctive style of furniture that gave a second life to the trees--something Jewell wants to encourage here.

"I do kind of strange furniture: It's a natural edge, more of a grain pattern. The more defects in the wood, the better for me," he said.

Three of Jewell's pieces sit in an art gallery in New Hope, Pa. He's included some unusual complements with his natural woods--saguaro cactus skeletons used as table and bench bases, for example. One of his favorite pieces is a bench with an ornate walnut joint.

Jewell said he understands Berry's desire to create an heirloom for his daughter out of the black walnut wood. "The guy used to play in that tree."

But the hope chest won't come together overnight: Walnut is especially dense wood and must dry slowly. "It'll probably be a year to 18 months before you'll be able to do anything with it," Jewell said.

He also will be making furniture out of wood felled at historical sites.

Once it is dried, within a year or so, the oak and poplar cut from Berry's yard will be processed in Fitzgerald's shop in Corridor Business Park in Spotsylvania.

J.C. Forest Products' core business is supplying wholesale hardwood lumber and custom molding and flooring to clients such as Roper Brothers Lumber Co.

"We have milled other folks' stuff on occasion, but this is highly unusual," said Fitzgerald. Milling shops typically don't process logs from people's yards because the wood often contains nails or wire-fence debris that can damage expensive cutting equipment.

"We would do that on a case-by-case basis, depending upon what the wood looks like," he said.

Fitzgerald, 41, who grew up in the sawmill business, started the company in 1995. Over the years, it moved from Orange County to Stafford and eventually to its present site off State Route 608 in eastern Spotsylvania.

For Berry, "We'll be doing a custom trim package--crown molding, casings for doors and windows and baseboard," Fitzgerald said.

The custom moldings have become an ever-growing part of the company's work, Fitzgerald said, because of the number of higher-end houses being built in the area.

The company has made trim for houses in the million-dollar-plus range. Woodwork for "people who want something that's not off the shelf at Home Depot," Fitzgerald said.

"For the last few years, we've seen a niche for moldings, and our customers have almost forced us to grow in that direction," he said.

When orders come in, metal templates are made to create each design.

One day recently, Bruce Allison, the operations manager, was working on a template for a crown-molding pattern. Two other employees ran poplar boards through a laser-guided saw, which cuts the molding. Nothing is wasted: Scrap wood goes to the needy for kindling; sawdust is sold for horse bedding.

Exotic woods from all over the world, such as African mahogany and alder, are stacked on pallets in the shop. The company also has a small retail area for weekend woodworkers who need supplies.

When his house in Fawn Lake is done, Berry, a Realtor there, figures he'll be paying about 35 percent more for the custom wood than it would cost him to buy material off the shelf.

"But it's worth it, from a sentimental perspective," he said.

To reach RUSTY DENNEN: 540/374-5431 rdennen@freelancestar.com