Amish Furniture Features

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Amish Furniture

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Amish Furniture -
How It Is Built

Finishing the Wood

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Amish Furniture - How It's Built

Amish furniture craftsmen have built a “brand name” all their own. Most Amish furniture shops are family owned producing small amounts of furniture per year. Each Amish family takes pride in their work and produces a amish furniture product that will last generations.

Listed below are some of the tools and techniques Amish furniture craftsmen use to build their furniture.

• New Technology and Old World Craftsmanship
Joints used
Gluing and Sanding process
Drawer Slides and Hardware

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New Technology and Old World Craftsmanship:

Many Amish furniture builders use woodworking tools that are available in the consumer market. They use table saws, band saws and wood jointing equipment built by Jet, Porter Cable, Powermatic, etc. Where the Amish differ is how the equipment is powered. Most Amish do not have electricity in their shops, so they remove the electric motors on their equipment and replace it with either a belt drive system or a hydraulic pump powered by a diesel engine.

Many of the Amish furniture craftsmen have invented their own unique tools and jigs to build their furniture. One of the table builders built a custom sanding system with a very long sanding belt. The long belt glides over the top of the entire table allowing it to all be sanded at one time and without any imperfections.

Some of the Amish shops have solar tubes placed in the ceiling. This allows the natural sunlight into the shop and avoids the need for electrical lights. Amish craftsmen also use the latest in finishing stains, dyes and varnishes. Many of the finishing shops work with chemical companies that manufacture stains to get “custom matched” colors for clients that are trying to match existing furniture.

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Joints used:

• Mortise and Tenon Joint

The most popular joint in Amish furniture building is the mortise and tenon joint (fig 57).

This joint has tremendous strength. It gets the strength by allowing more surface area for glue to hold. this gives our Amish furniture the strength to last through years of use.

Shown here is an example made with a router bit. This joint can be a “blind” joint, or extend completely through the wood to expose the end of the tenon.

Some Amish furniture builders use the blind mortise joint, Amish craftsmen glue a false “decorative” tenon to the opposite side of the post. This process is done to save some labor and control costs. Amish craftsmen say it is more difficult to build a through tenon, as there is nearly no margin for error when cutting the mortise hole. The mortise hole must be square and chiseled out by hand by the Amish furniture builder.

The blind mortise still allows for superior strength in the joint, yet saves the craftsmen some time in building.

• Dovetail Joint

Amish furniture craftsmen use the dovetail joint for drawers. This joint gives superior strength in all directions due to the interlocking “fingers” of the joint. Each dovetail is machined within a few thousands of an inch from solid wood (fig 58).


The base of the drawer has a groove cut for a drawer bottom. This entire assembly is then glued together, squared up, then clamped in place until the glue is dry. This attention to detail on the drawer shows the quality of Amish furniture craftsmanship. Many of the drawers and doors on Amish furniture are handcrafted and labeled for a specific spot. The drawer slides and gliders were custom fit for that exact opening. Make sure if you ever remove the Amish built drawers or doors that you label them.

• Dado Joint:

The dado joint is made with a special blade on the tablesaw. This allows a board to be “grooved” inside another board. This process adds tremendous strength to the Amish furniture (fig 103).

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Gluing and Sanding process:

Amish furniture craftsmen first select their lumber by color and grain pattern. The Amish craftsman then uses a wood jointer (fig 55) to smooth and straighten one edge of the board completely straight.

The Amish furniture craftsman checks carefully to get a perfectly straight edge on each board. Boards are then ripped to different widths to yield as much lumber as possible from each piece of wood. This is where the wider boards come into play as they give a nicer grain pattern. They are more expensive, but worth the money.

After the Amish Craftsmen lays out the correct order for gluing, The Amish furniture craftsman checks the end grain of the wood for the proper grain pattern. It is preferred to keep every other board’s yearly growth rings “opposite” from each other. This process help’s control the wood from “cupping” (fig 13).

The Amish Craftsmen then glues and clamps the boards together.

After the glue is dry the clamps are removed and excess glue is scraped off with a special glue scraping tool. The wood is placed into the wood planer and smoothed down to the approximate final thickness.

The Amish furniture craftsman is now ready to run the board through a special machine that has a large sanding belt inside. This belt gives a uniform sanding to the board. Amish craftsmen then finish the process by using various grits of sandpaper by hand to complete the process.

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Drawer Slides and Hardware:

Drawers:

Most Amish furniture shops use solid wood drawers. Most of the drawers are built from solid maple or oak and sprayed clear.

The difference in the operation of the drawers varies in the type of drawer slides that are used. Listed below are the two most popular types of drawer slides used on Amish furniture.

Amish Furniture Full extension Ball bearing drawer slides:

The full extension ball bearing slide (fig. 110 and 66) is a quality slide that operates by gliding within a track filled with ball bearings.

The drawers are often “full extension”, which means the drawer can extend out of the furniture the entire way. These slides are rated by weight. This tells you how much weight the drawer can handle. Most Amish furniture shops use 100# slides. At Amishshowroom.com we only use the ball bearging slides that are made in The USA. We believe the cheaper imports are of poor quality. Make sure you know what your buying! BLUM MOTION: Upon special request some of the Amish furniture drawers can be fitted with an undermount, premium quality blum motion drawer slide. These units are self closing and have a built in "non slam" feature that slows the drawer down just before it closes to prevent it from slamming shut. This is most often an added upgrade per drawer slide. visit blums webiste for details on their products.

Single Roller Slides:

This type of Amish furniture slide has a single bearing point just inside the frame of the furniture. To remove a drawer like this you open the drawer to fully open and lift. This will remove it from the track. Dont forget to mark where the drawer came from as the Amish furniture craftsmen build each drawer for a specific opening. (fig 65).

The drawer rides inside a track where the single wheel rolls. This type normally will not open the drawer to full extension.