♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Niels Jensen: My family has a long history of cabinet making.

In fact, I'm the 6th in a row on my father's side.

Although my father went on to practice as an architect in Canada, he did study cabinet making in Denmark.

So sawdust must be in the blood after six generations.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Niels: You know, I'm told--although I don't quite remember, but I'm told that I had my first toolbox when I was 5 years old.

I still have most of the hand tools that I had when I was young.

So I started working with wood as--at a very young age.

I guess I'm basically self-taught, but the hand tool skills I learned from my dad.

I moved into this shop and started working full-time as a cabinet maker in the 1980s.

The building that I'm in now was built in 1890 by the Tom Phobia Farmers Cooperative.

The downstairs where I have my machines used to be the grain feed store and the second floor was the community dance hall.

I suppose one advantage of being a cabinet maker in the country is that you're close to your resources.

As much as possible, I like to know where my materials came from.

So I've been able to develop relationships with farmers who have woodlots.

And they'll come into my shop and say, "Hey, Niels, I cut down a beautiful tree.

Are you interested?"

And I have a friend who owns a sawmill.

So I can take the log directly to the mill and have it sawn to my own specifications.

So being in the country is--it's an intimate relationship with the forest and with the trees.

And my friend John Marshall who has a cottage down in the narrows at Fitch Bay, he's a longtime avid scuba diver.

He's been scuba diving in Lake Memphremagog for many years and discovered that the bottom of the lake is littered with logs.

Well, in the late 19th century, they would fell the logs and raft them to the southern end of the lake.

I suppose some of them escaped and sank before they could be delivered to the sawmill.

Last year John said to me, "Niels, it would be really fun if I were to pull a log up if you could make a dining room table."

John Marshall: So we'll be going to Skinner's Island.

Niels: That's where the--you think there's good-- John: There's a beautiful log there.

Yeah.

Axe cut, about 20 inches diameter, 12 feet long.

Niels: This project is kind of exciting for me because we're going to pick up a submerged log, bring it to the sawmill, have it sawn, have it dried, and then actually make a piece of furniture with it.

So it's kind of a neat idea.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Niels: It's always cooler at the bottom of the lake.

There's very little oxygen in the water, and the wood lasts a long, long, long time.

John: I got a second look out of it.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Niels: We weren't 100% sure what type of wood it was when we first brought it up.

The logs are covered in mud and slime and whatever settles on them.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ male: Whoa, look at that.

Niels: And when we pulled the log up and we brought it to the mill and started sowing it and we discovered it was birch, what was really exciting for me is that the log was a flamed birch.

It has a very distinctive and lively grain.

Waterlogged wood, the wood cut in the 19th century, was cut from the virgin forests of the eastern townships.

The trees were growing under stress because of the very well-developed canopy of the forest.

It would take an awful long time for a tree to reach a harvestable age.

This particular tree that I'm using, I counted 300 growth rings, fine rings close together.

Typically, wood is at around 35% humidity when it's a green log, and you have to have the wood at about 6% or 7% humidity to make a tabletop with it.

So that's a lot of water to remove from the board.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Niels: The blue that you see on the ends of the boards it's a heavy latex sealer that Charlie paints on.

Wood dries much more quickly at the ends than it does in the middle of the board.

If you don't seal the ends, there's a good chance that the board will crack when it's in the kiln.

♪♪♪ Niels: It's uncommon for cabinet makers to use waterlogged or salvaged wood.

Although over the years it's becoming something that people are more and more interested in, as people are thinking about global warming and being more careful about using the resources that we have.

People are asking more about making things from salvaged wood or recovered wood.

People are more sensitive about the materials that are being used.

So to bring you up to date on where we're at with the project, I retrieve the wood from the kiln.

I lay the wood out to sort it.

I sort through the pile first looking for pieces with the nicest color-- Niels: This one will be good.

Niels: and grain.

I set those aside.

Typically, I would build the table top first, and that's what I'm doing with this project.

Working with waterlogged wood is very similar to working with the conventional wood.

The wood is plain now.

The wood has gone through the thickness sander and it's rough dimensioned and it's ready now to start the glue-up for the tabletop.

Niels: You can see how this gets more complicated, the more boards you're gluing.

Now I've got to use pins on some biscuits.

Where's my glue?

So I'm getting ready.

I'm gluing up the biscuits now.

The biscuits are embedded in the wood to help me align the top.

Okay, now I'm going to glue up the board.

You know, in 35 years, I've never had anyone call me and say, "Hey, Niels, the tabletop unglued."

Niels: To my mind, as we're becoming more and more a consumer society, we've lost contact with how things are actually made, and I think most people don't really understand or they don't really think about how much effort is required in making a piece of furniture.

Niels: Looks like it's going to come out quite flat.

And if there's any little wave in it later on, I can remove that.

And I'm attaching the aprons.

So I guess that's it for today.

Niels: I prefer working alone in the shop and getting lost in my own thoughts.

I used to have a general contracting business and I had a lot of people working for me or with me, and I found that I was kind of getting disconnected from the actual making of things.

It became more of an administrative job than actually working with the wood, which is the thing that I enjoy.

Niels: I'm moving into phase two of the project now.

With the square blanks, I'll be making tapered legs.

And when you get to the band saw, it's important to cut near the line but not right on the line.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Niels: I like making tables, any size of table.

I mean, dining room tables are obviously more complicated.

The surfaces of a dining table have to be flat.

And when you're dealing with large glue-ups, the way I'm doing on this table, the challenge is to keep the top flat.

The clients that come to me are either referred to me by word of mouth or they're referred to me by pieces that I've made.

So somebody will be visiting somebody's house and said, "Oh, where did you get that coffee table?"

"Oh, yeah, well, I got that from Niels."

Niels: The blank here is now 42 by about 99 inches, and I have to cut it to 96 for the final length.

Niels: Most commercial woodworking shops have panel saws to make these long cross cuts.

And I was thinking of buying one until I discovered how expensive they were.

So I figured through trial and error that I could make my own.

What I used to do in the beginning when I was trying to set up the shop was that I would set aside a certain portion of the money that I got from whatever project that I was working on, and I had a little savings account, and when I had a thousand dollars saved up, I'd go out and buy a table saw or whatever.

It took a long time to set up that way, but to me, the advantage was that I could be more relaxed in the shop knowing that I didn't have any debt to carry and if work slowed down I could still manage.

Niels: So now, except for endless hours of sanding, the tabletop is made.

It's proper width, the proper length, nice tight glue lines.

Niels: Upstairs I have the finishing room and I have my design studio.

Niels: Typically, every project starts with a drawing.

I can show it to the customer, or we can make changes, do revisions.

Niels: I would have to say that the shaker style and the arts and crafts style and the Danish modern style have heavily influenced my own sense of design.

If I have my own way, I tend to work more in styles that highlight the quality of the wood.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Niels: Occasionally, I'll have the opportunity to explore my own sense of design and I'll build a piece of furniture for a show, but it's mostly commissioned work.

Niels: I've made the apron, the rough pieces for the apron.

And what I'm going to do today is I'm going to be doing the mortise and tenon joints to connect the apron to the legs.

[saw whirring] ♪♪♪ Niels: This is one of the pride and joys of my shop.

Normally, I wouldn't be able to afford a machine like this, but now that people are cutting mortises with computer-assisted routers, these machines are turning up on the market from time to time as scrap metal.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Niels: The nice thing about having a shop on a quiet road in the country is that, you know, life doesn't really get any better than that.

I'm looking out my dusty windows at a beautiful landscape.

The drawback of being in the country is that you're removed from stimulation that people would normally get in the city.

You have to make an effort.

I do that through reading.

So I have to apply the glue into the mortises to receive the tenants.

And the trick here is to apply enough glue so that you get a good bond, but not so much glue that you get squeezed out.

If you get squeezed out of the glue, it really causes you trouble in the finishing room because the glue doesn't accept the stain very well.

When I'm working with wood in general, I consider the effort that the tree made in the project.

You know, a tree has been standing for 300 years, it's taken down, you know, there's an element of what the tree has gone through, the life of the tree, which results in--you know, it contributes to the beauty of the finished product.

I wet the surface of the table with water to raise the grain of the wood and then I knock that down with my finished sanding.

The purpose of that is in preparation for the finishing room.

I'll be putting a light stain on this to highlight the flaming of the wood.

I know a lot of young people who want to be cabinet makers they often think of this kind of a setting.

You know, I've got my own shop, and I've got my own list of clients, and I'm doing beautiful and interesting projects.

It's hard to succeed.

You have to make a commitment to being a cabinet maker.

You can't say, "Well, you know, I want to have a certain lifestyle," and then expect that cabinet making is going to fulfill that desire.

I'm using what is called a random orbital sander with a very fine grit paper on it, and this will knock down the grain that I raised in the wedding process and it will also remove any fine scratch marks from the belts ending.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Niels: The nice thing about having the finishing room upstairs is that it's relatively dust free.

The only trouble is I have to get it upstairs.

People don't necessarily see the value as much as they used to.

We live in this disposable society.

We buy a $95 table, and then the table breaks, and we throw it out, and we buy another one.

I find that to own something handmade that reflects the skills and the frailties of a custom cabinet maker, I think, to me that's on the win.

Niels: I strongly feel that people, their initial response before they look to see, you know, how good was his joinery and how good was his design, people's first reaction it seems to me is always very tactile.

They'll rub their hand on--you know, oh isn't that beautiful surface.

And what they're doing is that they're feeling the finish that's on the wood.

And I always try to keep in mind that the goal of what I do is not only to try to work very accurately, but I'm always working for the finishing room, and that requires a lot of sanding.

On this project I would hazard a guess that at least 50% of my time is spent sanding.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Niels: On this project I'll have a minimum of five coats of lacquer to put on and I have to sand between each coat.

That, I always do by hand.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Niels: Yeah, I'm going to come down, John.

We'll take it down together.

Niels: What I like about cabinet making is going from the drawing to the actual finished physical projects and I like the fact that there's a beginning, a middle, and an end.

You know, there's always room for improvement.

You can evolve.

You never reach the pinnacle.

You're always striving forward and never reaching it.

Niels: Yeah, we'll just lay it down on the carpet here and-- Niels: Well, I think the people who seek me out are the people who want something unusual.

There are some people like John, for instance.

What engaged him in this project was the wood, the fact that the wood is unique.

John: Whoa.

♪♪♪ John: Tada.

female: Oh my God.

Niels: It's amazing, right?

female: Oh my God, it's beautiful.

male: You outdid yourself, John.

female: Oh my.

John: Happy Thursday.

female: Thank you, honey.

Niels: Yeah, I don't know how many cabinet makers there are like me left, one guy in a shop, you know, making custom pieces one at a time.

I would venture to guess that the number is declining every year.

I feel like the last of a breed sometimes.

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