Tag: Live edge wood furniture

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 What is live edge wood furniture?

You might wonder what live edge wood is, let us break it down for you.

Live edge wood furniture refers to the inclusion of the unique natural edge of a tree in the lumber being used for a product.  Typically this is the sapwood with the bark removed. In standard lumber this edge is milled off, live edge wood, however, maintains the natural form of the the tree.

Live edge wood furniture is meant to display the natural edge of wood without the manufactured edge that you would find in most furniture or box stores. More often than not most of the furniture you find in stores today are MDF, plywood, or even plastic made to look like wood.

Check out some of our videos where we are creating some new products.

The biggest thing that sets us apart from other stores is that our products are 100% natural wood. We buy our wood locally and in slab form, dry, cut, and plane the wood and then create beautiful pieces for your home. Plus no two products we create are the same. As each piece of wood has unique characteristics so do our products, even down to our smallest coaster set. Each coaster while made from the same piece of wood is entirely unique.

Interested in seeing what we make? Check out our gallery and our shop

We keep our designs as unique as our customers, no one will have an exact duplicate product you have purchased from us. Even our colorants for the epoxy rivers vary from piece to piece. The color itself or the way the epoxy has been swirled varies from piece to piece.

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What is the difference between live edge wood and manufactured wood?

Live Edge Wood Bar top

We actually get asked this question often.

Here is a brief breakdown of the difference between live edge wood and manufactured wood. The wood that we use is solid live edge wood. We purchase our live edge wood slabs directly from a wood mill that is local to us.  I am not necessarily going to name names, but Flower City Milling is one of our main lumber providers.

Most furniture stores or big box stores sell  manufactured wood or more commonly called MDF. MDF is basically made through the process of heating, gluing, and compressing wood chips and sawdust together to create a wood-like composite.  Most people know this, and some don’t care because MDF furniture is cheaper, more affordable. The problem with that is, it also doesn’t last long and you often end up chucking it to the curb and buying new pieces.

What they don’t tell you at the furniture store is:

  • Manufactured wood contains formaldehyde; a known carcinogen.
  • Manufactured wood cannot be recycled. Because of this, unwanted MDF gets sent to the landfill.

Okay so enough about MDF.

Lets tell you what is so great about live edge wood

Live edge wood comes directly from a tree, from nature. It is the natural form of wood. It is not processed or treated with harmful chemicals. Also, it is the only wood we use, it is important to our business and our values to only use natural live edge wood for all of our products. The live edge slab we use come right from nature, why would we change that? Why wouldn’t we want to enhance nature’s natural beauty and create something wonderful for your home?

Now the big question, is live edge wood more expensive than MDF? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is, live edge wood can be more expensive to purchase initially, but after you have gone through 2 or 3 coffee tables made from mdf, live edge wood doesn’t look so expensive anymore. In the long run live edge wood will outlive mdf furniture time and time again. Live edge wood furniture can certainly have a higher price tag than mdf furniture. But at the end of a few years, you won’t be kicking our furniture to the curb because it is chipped or broken.

We hope this answers some of your questions, maybe in our next post we can talk about care of live edge wood products