Co-operatives

The trouble with furniture making is deciding what equipment to get that is appropriate to what you are doing. Furniture making is one of the best ways to spend your days, but there are problems from time to time and this is one of the hardy annuals, and another that is common to all of us is “Where can I get suitable wood ?”

So, assuming that you are wanting to buy it in from a Timber Merchant and you don’t live near one of the specialist ones, what’s the problem ?

Well, all the above considerations (in part 1) apply. Certainly that’s the situation in the North East of Scotland – at Lethenty Mill we are asked on a weekly basis to supply wood for furniture makers - there are enough of us here to buy the quantities (for our own needs)

 that will soften the hearts of a large timber merchant; but we are not dealers and we don’t have the storage capacity to buy in for others.

What if a group of furniture makers were to form a cooperative ? What if there were say 15 or 20 of them and they had somewhere to receive and temporarily store the goods, could they get an account with a timber merchant ? I would think that they could, but they would have to take advice from the timber merchant about what species were available and what cross sections to order. Maybe there would have to be a coop committee changing regularly. The company that I deal with requires orders of at least £250 to give me free delivery – they are a national company. Local merchants will deliver free on reasonable amounts, but they may not be able to supply the range of species or cross sections of the bigger companies.
I can see problems that could crop up – the problem of storage, ( a garage would be good enough for a start,) OTT selectivity by members, and paperwork; but as long as the timber merchant didn’t have to do more than they normally have to do with their “Regulars” the price should be very good. Access to the garage would have to be good enough for an articulated lorry, although a local merchant may have a smaller option.

A group like this could have valuable purchasing power and could deal with more than one supplier. Goodwill would be essential to keep it alive and something like this could be organised on the Wood-Mag forum. If a group like this could organise their requirements for standard cross sections (and it is possible), it would save the members having to machine them individually. And it could help to answer the other problem faced by the otherwise placid furniture maker; “which machines do I need ?”
Sharing machinery and tools might be another benefit of a group like this but this is an area fraught with problems and might be an effect of forming such a group rather than a specific goal. It might be a development of like minded people meeting and cooperating that a couple of them would keep their costs down by sharing equipment …. who knows ?