Chair maker carves its niche.

Carving robots help Commercial Carving crank out 

Philip Robideau's office has immediate seating. Chairs of almost every design imaginable, all made by Commercial Carving Co., line three of the four walls of the sales manager's spacious office, which doubles as the company's showroom.

Carved furniture parts hang like art from the walls. "This," says Robideau with a flourish, "gives clients an idea of what we can do."

Commercial Carving Co. is a woodworking company with a rich history, dedicated to two specialties - chairs and carving. Half of what the company produces are solid wood components mostly carved by an army of CNC machines. The other half is custom chairs built from in-house designs or to the customer's specifications.

Commercial Carving Co. is located in Thomasville, NC, the heart of furniture country. The one-man, one machine business was founded in 1934 by husband-and-wife team Lenvel and Vonnie Rothrock in the basement of their home. The original company focused on carving but by the 1940s the Rothrocks had added occasional tables and chairs to their line. During the 1960s, the company retrained its business sights on chairs and carving. Today, Commercial Carving, armed with 1,600 carving spindles, lays claim to being the largest carving company in the world. The firm continues to be family-owned and run by Bill Murphy, president, and Simon "Sam" Downs, vice president.

Chairs for All Occasions

The chairs made by Commercial Carving Co. typically fall into the medium to high-end price ranges and are sold for the home or to hotels and other businesses. The company has the capacity to produce up to 300 chairs a day and has made hundreds of thousands of chairs for nearly 38 years - but you will never see its name on any of them.

"Everything we produce is made for someone else," Robideau says. "We have done every style there is from Chippendale to Queen Anne to French, Shaker, Mission and Contemporary. We like to say that we are partners with our clients."

"There is no easy way to make a chair," says Don Strong, plant manager. "A chair is a unique animal, generally more complicated to build than case goods. It's a labor-intensive enterprise - more involved than a table, dresser or chest, which is why so many companies opt to outsource chairs."

The process begins with a chair design, idea or a drawing. Robideau says his company does a cost analysis. "Our experience in chair production helps us determine ways to produce cost-effective products without sacrificing the integrity of the design. Our management team will offer suggestions at the design stage and then offer a bottom line cost so that the client can determine costs versus profit. Next we create a mock-up of the chair, built by hand. This prototype is presented for approval. The mock-up is built 'dry,' without glue, so that changes can be made. If the clients don't like the shape of the arm, we make the change while they watch. We go through the whole chair. Sometimes just the subtle tweaking of a piece makes the difference between a good design and a great one. An added 1/8-inch curve can make a chair look finessed rather than clunky," Robideau says.

"There are many considerations involved in a chair design. First and foremost, it has to sit well. When we build the mock-up we put a seat in the chair and have the client sit on the design. Pitch is important to how a chair will sit. If the design calls for slats, we check on how the slats feel. Adding a slat can make a difference in the comfort of the chair," Robideau adds.

Achieving 'Inspiration'

When the creative juices need a little jogging, the team at Commercial Carving will take a client into the "archives," an area of the plant that is home to literally thousands of prototypes. "This is a great room for inspiration for clients who are not totally certain about what they want," Robideau says.

In some other cases, clients bring samples of chairs they want recreated. For example, Robideau says, "A representative from Flagler University in St. Augustine, FL, brought in an antique and intricately carved chair the university wanted reproduced for dining hall seating." Since everything Commercial Carving makes is custom ordered, there is no "typical" chair design. Popular items over the years have included Queen Anne and Chippendale designs in maple and cherry and Mission styles primarily in oak and also cherry, Robideau says.

Once the mock-up has been approved, two samples are made for client approval. One is given to the client, the other is kept for Commercial Carving to use as a production prototype. The company also provides hand-made samples for the client for marketing purposes.

A Four-Plant Operation

Commercial Carving has three side-by-side plants in Thomasville and a fourth finishing plant just outside of town. The four facilities total 400,000 square feet. The company's administrative offices are located adjacent to the three-plant complex.

Plant 1, which houses a roughmill, also features a lumberyard and two Irvington-Moore dry kilns. The company will use any wood the customer specifies but they inventory species such as ash, maple, cherry, red oak and mahogany.

Sanding operations are performed at Plant 2. A Nordfab dust collection system and a massive MAC filter were installed in the early 1990s to allow the company to double its sanding operations. Some 35 sanding machines are in use at any one time.

"Sanding is a big part of our operation," says Strong. The plant features a variety of sanding equipment including pump sanders made in-house and a variety of spindle sanders and string sanders also built by Commercial Carving Co.

Big-Time Carving

All carving is done in Plant 3. This mammoth facility has earned Commercial Carving the reputation as having the world's largest carving factory, Robideau says. The bulk of the company's most recent machinery acquisitions are housed in Plant 3, including robotic carving machinery. Some 200,000 square feet of space is devoted to carving.

The company employs a full-time hand carver who makes all the master prototypes that serve as templates for Commercial Carving's numerous CNC multi-spindle carving machines. His is a most important job because he translates the carving orders from CAD drawings, blueprints or "sketches done on the backs of napkins," says Robideau. The carving operation includes 17 Thermwood CNC robotic carving machines, purchased over the last six years.

"Our founder was known for inventing innovative carving machinery," says Robideau, "and we have a long history of creating machinery on-site to suit our very specific needs. Our engineers worked with Thermwood for over a year to develop the kind of machinery we needed for our operation. If you add up the various carving machines here we have a total of 1,600 spindles. This gives us the largest carving production capacity in the world."

In addition to the robotic carvers, Plant 3 houses 62 multiple-spindle carvers. The machines are equipped with 24, 40 or 48 spindles, which means the machinery can carve that many pieces at a time.

Finishing and upholstery operations are performed at the company's Plant 4 in nearby Davidson County. The factory features eight large spray booths. Hand-held Graco spraying equipment is used in the finishing plant which is intentionally devoid of conveyors. Chairs are brought in assembled in the white wood stage.

"As a custom operation, we may use 20 finishing steps for one chair and six for the next. Each chair we produce must exactly match the client's other pieces in a line and we are very aware of the quality demands on us to integrate our work with the rest of the line. We find it easier to manage finishing in a booth rather than using the conveyor, non-stop finishing methods. The finishing process will likely include staining, glazing, lacquers, sealers, final lacquers and waxing plus sanding and color checks between each step," Robideau says.

Commercial Carving Co. employs about 175 people. While the company regards its clients as partners, it also strives to treat employees as part of the team. "We have some very talented people who have been with us for decades," Robideau says. "We also have benefited from the mandatory retirement ages of some area firms and inherited extremely talented retirees. Our employees are partners in our success. We find that so many times a seasoned craftsman can find the answer to a production problem. Their expertise is part of what makes us a success."

Chairs are shipped throughout North America and around the world. The plant recently exported a large order of chairs to Saudi Arabia. Asked to discuss the changes in the business over the last decade, Robideau and Strong both pointed to shorter production runs and shorter turn-around times.

"In the past, we routinely had orders for 2,000 of the same chair. Today runs are much smaller, Robideau says. "Also, because we are part of a larger production picture, we have had to adapt to the time constraints our clients are under. The just-in-time philosophy of manufacturing and shorter lead times have affected our timetables, but we pride ourselves on meeting their needs and being part of a seamless operation."