Woodworking

[Lolothai]

Hi,

 

Does anyone know if woodworking is a good/profitable business in Thailand? 

[FarFlungFalang]

Yes it is good.Profitably would depend on the quality and desirability of the work.I've seen some fine woodwork in Thailand if you are into or enjoy wood carving there is the Royal Woodcarving Centre in Samut Prakhan just south of Bangkok which is well worth a visit.

[Lolothai]

thanks, my wife has a friend who is carpenter and do some pretty amazing work. She wants to make a teak farm so I was wondering if it could be interesting to make a workshop and employ her friend.

We would have the full work chain, product/manufacturing/selling.

[FarFlungFalang]

2 minutes ago, Lolothai said:

thanks, my wife has a friend who is carpenter and do some pretty amazing work. She wants to make a teak farm so I was wondering if it could be interesting to make a workshop and employ her friend.

We would have the full work chain, product/manufacturing/selling.

Funny you should mention Teak farm as we have a Teak plantation and I've just made some furniture from some of the smaller trees that died off so far I've made a couple of chairs and an industrial design bed from these.We have also just planted 2000 trees of Mai Payung Mai Padoo and Mai Yaang.

[Lolothai]

I've just googled "rustic industrial design furniture" there is some wonderful and creative work.

[Lolothai]

How young do you think teak tree can be cut and used?

[Lolothai]

Could you show some of your personal achievements?

[FarFlungFalang]

5 minutes ago, Lolothai said:

Could you show some of your personal achievements?

I will,just going out now to pick up some wood it'll be a couple of hours.

[FarFlungFalang]

[FarFlungFalang]

Here is a beehive under construction on the woodworking bench I made.

[FarFlungFalang]

Two more shots of the workbench under construction with one shot showing how I cut the mai gik 8 by 8 inch hardwood by hand with a 24 inch hand saw.All the tops and legs had to be cut and hand planed to get squared to use my table saw and thicknesser.This wood is so hard that sparks could seen when using the table saw.

[FarFlungFalang]

Here is a TV stand where the mild steel 50 by 50mm tubing was sanded and coated with polyurethane to get an almost stainless steel look.The wood is half hand planed again to get two square sides before using the table saw and thicknesser.

[FarFlungFalang]

5 hours ago, Lolothai said:

How young do you think teak tree can be cut and used?

Not sure really the teak trees we have are over 20 years old and some are only about 4" in diameter and some are about 8" to 10".Might be better getting it directly from someone growing it.I see quite a lot of plantations around.

[Lolothai]

That's great work, impressive, all your house is made of wood, I would love your place.

Even the workbenches look amazing.

How much do you think a 8" log teak would cost per meter?

I wish I could learn to do what you are doing. I made my hand on euca wood made for the paper mill, that was a challenge, I just made some 6x6 meters sheds. I made the columns and tie beams with my thickness planer, the poor thing is cheap and suffered a lot but still it worked. 

I also managed to make a cabinet, once varnished everything look good but I will have to regularly treat against beetles.

I will make a workshop, not for business but for my personal use, buy some equipment, band-saw, router, jointer etc

I still have a lot of euca logs to practice.

How much would you sell your bed for example and how long did he take you to make it?

I'm going to ask my wife about mai gik.

He beehive is a great idea, I was thinking about it as we have a lot of tree fruits and the world is in dire needs of bees.

 

 

[metempsychotic]

Think if you are going to do it, you need to do something special, something different. Otherwise you are just another one of many. 

 

This guy makes stuff I would be ecatic to place in my home. 

https://faisalmalikdesign.com/portfolio-2/

 

He is in bkk. 

 

[FarFlungFalang]

54 minutes ago, Lolothai said:

That's great work, impressive, all your house is made of wood, I would love your place.

Even the workbenches look amazing.

How much do you think a 8" log teak would cost per meter?

I wish I could learn to do what you are doing. I made my hand on euca wood made for the paper mill, that was a challenge, I just made some 6x6 meters sheds. I made the columns and tie beams with my thickness planer, the poor thing is cheap and suffered a lot but still it worked. 

I also managed to make a cabinet, once varnished everything look good but I will have to regularly treat against beetles.

I will make a workshop, not for business but for my personal use, buy some equipment, band-saw, router, jointer etc

I still have a lot of euca logs to practice.

How much would you sell your bed for example and how long did he take you to make it?

I'm going to ask my wife about mai gik.

He beehive is a great idea, I was thinking about it as we have a lot of tree fruits and the world is in dire needs of bees.

 

 

Thanks.I think the cheapest way to buy Teak would be to buy the whole tree and at a guess I would say probably not more than about 5,000 Baht for the whole tree but I think if you hunt around and find the right seller you might get a much better price and I'm just taking a wild guess but I will ask around.There are companies that will make a whole teak house.

http://www.thailannahome.com 

You could ask the carpenter you mentioned about teak prices and keep asking anybody.

Actually if you go to the local government offices in and of the cities in Isaan they'll have a forestry department that can help with any info about growing and sourcing teak and many other types of wood that's where we got started to register our teak plantation and where we got our 2000 seedlings for our farm. 

I think you are already learning to do what I'm doing if your using a thickness planer your well on the way.

I think if I got 15k baht for the bed I would be doing alright.I have an order to make one for our niece.I think I could build the bed in one month quite comfortably now that I've had a practice go and got a bit more organised.

I'm still waiting to put some bees in the hive as we had a bee hive in our roof but they died before I finished the hive but I'm still looking for more.

Our house is half a normal concrete Thai house and the wood house part is joined onto the back.

[FarFlungFalang]

Here is a photo I took today.It's still a work in progress.

[sometimewoodworker]

2 hours ago, FarFlungFalang said:

Thanks.I think the cheapest way to buy Teak would be to buy the whole tree and at a guess I would say probably not more than about 5,000 Baht for the whole tree but I think if you hunt around and find the right seller you might get a much better price and I'm just taking a wild guess but I will ask around

As I recall you need to be extremely careful about transportation of teak and a few other wood species also even with the correct paperwork you can still run into problems. This information is admittedly from a few years ago and I do not have personal experience.
 

You will be correct on the point of buying the tree will be the cheapest way, but you then have to either be able to saw it yourself or know a saw mill that will do it, then have a place to sticker the sawn planks for a year or 2 also you will probably get less than 50% yield  and for young trees (less than about 50 years old) will have a high percentage of sapwood. 
 

This is great fun if you have time and space, but you may need to buy seasoned wood while waiting for your own to be usable.

[FarFlungFalang]

1 minute ago, sometimewoodworker said:

As I recall you need to be extremely careful about transportation of teak and a few other wood species also even with the correct paperwork you can still run into problems. This information is admittedly from a few years ago and I do not have personal experience.

You are absolutely correct thanks for the reminder,I did intend to mention this but totally forgot by the time I finished. 

[FarFlungFalang]

4 hours ago, metempsychotic said:

Think if you are going to do it, you need to do something special, something different. Otherwise you are just another one of many. 

 

This guy makes stuff I would be ecatic to place in my home. 

https://faisalmalikdesign.com/portfolio-2/

 

He is in bkk. 

 

Thanks for this link.We have a condo on On Nut Rd and I would have gone passed this place hundreds of times but we are now renting out the condo now so don't get down there much now but I will check it out next time I'm down there!

[sometimewoodworker]

7 minutes ago, FarFlungFalang said:

You are absolutely correct thanks for the reminder,I did intend to mention this but totally forgot by the time I finished. 

Is it still current?

For the larger boards how old were your trees? It looks as if you are able to use relatively greenwood without a problem from the construction method. The bed was probably a lot faster to make than mine as I used almost no metal in its construction.

[FarFlungFalang]

50 minutes ago, sometimewoodworker said:

Is it still current?

For the larger boards how old were your trees? It looks as if you are able to use relatively greenwood without a problem from the construction method. The bed was probably a lot faster to make than mine as I used almost no metal in its construction.

I'm not sure if it is still current but I'm assuming it is.The wood in the TV stand is Mai Chuum Char (my best interpretation from wife) was green when she got it and warped a fair bit or was not cut very straight or both.The bed is Mai Padoo.I did make a bed for the niece that was all wood she supplied which was Mai Alung from memory and that took a few months which was more from procrastination than anything.We had a large Mai Padoo tree on our farm that got hit by lightening and I thought I hit the jackpot but no we had to give it to the temple because it's bad luck.Near by in the next village is a depot where they store wood that has been confiscated by the authorities including Mai Payoong but apparently that has all gone walkabout!

The work bench was made from reclaimed wood that was rotting away on the farm.

Some of the larger boards come from the mother in law who is about 76 and some I don't actually know where they come from hence I'm unable to say how old they were.I can only guess some of the bigger Mai daang trees would be 50-60 years old.I actually prefer the trees more than the wood  and sometime feel guilty working with it but then a lot of it just gets burnt or turned into charcoal.I just got some Mai Gik trees that were blown down during the recent storms and about one hundred went down on the road to Yasothon and some massive ones among them and on the other side of Yasothon on the Roi Et road they've just cut down a heap of 200 year old Mai Yang trees which nearly made me cry.

Edited November 7, 2019 by FarFlungFalang

[metempsychotic]

4 hours ago, FarFlungFalang said:

Thanks for this link.We have a condo on On Nut Rd and I would have gone passed this place hundreds of times but we are now renting out the condo now so don't get down there much now but I will check it out next time I'm down there!

No worries, I've seen some of his stuff in person and it's lovely. I follow his Facebook as well. He makes some great stuff. 

[sometimewoodworker]

13 hours ago, HobbNathan said:

Hardwood flooring is the best for your home beauty

Your opinion.

[FarFlungFalang]

1 hour ago, sometimewoodworker said:

Your opinion.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder!