Most furniture you buy today was never touched by a hand plane. It was machine-sanded at 4,000 rpm, sprayed with a urethane topcoat, and stacked on a pallet an hour later. That process is efficient. It is also why so much modern furniture feels cold to the touch and flat to the eye.
What a plane actually does
A sharp hand plane removes wood in translucent shavings — not dust. Each pass compresses the surface fibers and reveals the grain underneath. The finish is not applied on top of the wood; it is in the wood. You can feel the difference under your palm, and you can see the difference under morning light.
It takes longer on purpose
A dining table top takes one of our makers about three hours to finish by hand, start to end. A CNC machine would do the same cut in eleven minutes. The extra time is not a romantic flourish — it is the thing that lets the finish soak deeper, that reveals defects before the table ships, and that makes the piece repairable for the next sixty years.
What this means for the piece you take home
It means the walnut will glow instead of gleam. It means a water ring can be planed out instead of buffed over. It means, honestly, that the piece is not trying to look perfect — it is trying to look real.
We sign every piece before it leaves the workshop. If you ever want it refinished, we will plane it again ourselves, for free, for as long as we are still making furniture.