At Kodama, we craft lasting pieces deserving of the beautiful woods used to build them. Lumber coming from old growth forest has often spent a hundred years or more to reach the size where it is cut. Owner Tony Cirranello explains, “We want to craft pieces that will last at least that long – to honor something beautiful that’s been cut down.”
Earth friendly
We regularly use reclaimed and antique lumber to construct fine furniture. Commonly available woods include oak, beech, and pine, with a more limited availability of black walnut, butternut, chestnut, and hickory. Our reclaimed woods are sourced from buildings in Appalachia and the American heartland. Many pieces are reclaimed from 1800s barns. If forest management and sustainability are concerns, we offer wood from managed forests and certified supply chains. We also offer low emission and formaldehyde free sheet products, such as plywood, for use in cabinet construction. Our earth friendly finishes can further reduce environmental impacts. You can read more about finishing options here.
Heirloom construction
Perhaps you are building a piece as a gift – a custom dining table for a newlywed couple – and you’d like it to be very special. That’s heirloom construction; design and construction work together to highlight the beauty of the wood and techniques used. We use only mortise and tenon and peg joinery, dovetails, half-laps and other age-old construction techniques and the highest quality FAS hardwoods. No sheet products and no modern fasteners are used. Hinges may be concealed modern hardware at your request, such as a knife hinge in brass, or reproduction butt hinge if that is more appropriate. We integrate wood slides – a complicated process that must allow for expansion and contraction of the wood. While more costly than conventional construction due to the time our craftsmen spend working on the piece, the result is a true heirloom deserving of the care of your family for generations to come.
Conventional construction
We use conventional construction techniques on most of the pieces crafted in our shop. Modern fasteners – screws, for example – cut down production time and lower the cost of custom crafted pieces. In a piece constructed using conventional techniques we use sheet products such as plywood for cabinet boxes and apply any veneers over plywood. For painted surfaces we use paint grade woods and some painted surfaces – at the request of the builder – may be MDF. Conventional pieces all use concealed soft closing hinges and undermount drawer slides from Blum. Our standard drawer boxes are a half-blind dovetailed box.