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| Valley View Woodwork |
| Shirl meets a craftsman who turns the deformities in timber into beautiful works of art. |
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There's plenty of wooden furniture on the market, but there's not much you can call art. This is Valley View Woodworks, where a slab of timber or a gnarled burl is transformed into fine furniture. We take a look at the gallery and workshop.
Valley View Woodwork was established in 1999. Randy and Maree DeGraw wanted to create a gallery and workshop for fine furniture and woodwork art. They found the perfect location just minutes from Maleny near the Sunshine Coast and the business was born.
Randy's studio is laden with custom-made machinery and is where he spends most of his time. The gallery is next door and has a glass-walled viewing area so visitors can watch Randy at work. There is also a tearoom on site.
Randy's pride and joy is his unique levelling machine. It was designed to flatten unusually shaped timbers quickly and easily. For example, Randy estimates levelling a burl one metre in diameter would take less than two hours using his lathe. This translates into two days if hand routing and plane levelling.
The levelling lathe is particularly useful when working with burls. Randy makes a lot of burl furniture, making the tool invaluable. Burl wood is the result of a virus infecting trees or an insect laying eggs into the sap. Once started, the burl begins to grow as if it were a limb of the tree.
These irregularities make cutting wood difficult so they were often discarded by mills. Today they are highly sought after for their wonderful grain patterns and the fine furniture they can be made into. Randy specialises in natural edged burl tables of 900mm to 1200mm. Burls this large have grown on trees for more than 400 years.
It takes Randy about four weeks to transform a burl slab into furniture. Once dry, the timber is sanded, levelled, filled and polished. Red River Gums and Jarrah are the two most common trees in Australia from which burls are found but he also works with Huon Pine, Red Cedar and Camphor Laurel.
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More Info
Valley View Woodwork
290 Maleny-Kenilworth Tourist Drive
Witta via Maleny
Queensland 4552
Ph: 07 5494 4222
Fax: 07 5494 4110
E-mail: info@vvwoodwork.com.au
www.vvwoodwork.com.au
Valley View Woodwork's gallery and tearoom is open from 10am-5pm daily (closed Tuesdays). They pack and deliver goods world wide.
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