International Wood International Wood 2005 | Page 30

“We love just about everything about
Honduran mahogany – its ease of
workability, beauty, and durability.”
CARTER LEE
“We like the older moulding machines because they still
accept the old square tooling heads. Unlike the newer cylin-
drical heads, square heads can hold as many as eight or 10
knives in different combinations to cut different parts of a
profile, giving you an infinite number of possibilities.
“If I had a 10-inch crown to run for a historic duplication,
some odd thing that was originally made in 1800, I’d have to
commit a set of 10-inch knives on a newer moulder. This gets
quite expensive for the extremely short runs we do, some as
small as 20 lineal feet. Using a square head, though, we can
blend different smaller knives together, altering only one
or two of them to get a match for the profile. This makes it
much easier and more cost effective to match an existing
profile. Of course if it was originally made by Carter Lee,
we’ve got records that go all the way back to 1873.”
Carter Lee favors Honduran mahogany for its custom
door orders, Welch says.
“We love just about everything about it – its ease of work-
ability, beauty, and durability. It’s perfect for our custom
work, 50 percent of which is matching existing doors on
historic and landmark buildings. Some of those doors were
originally old-growth pine, poplar and fir, woods that just
don’t exist anymore so it’s impossible to match them with
the same species. We think Honduran mahogany is a perfect
solution. When necessary we can stain them to match the
existing doors, but often people who own these historically
significant homes are required by architectural guidelines
to paint at least the exterior of the door. We don’t usually
know how the door will be finished, so we make them all
out of the same grade of lumber and send them out ready
for finishing.
“We’ve done many entries where we mix wood species:
Honduran mahogany on the exterior, and a completely dif-
ferent wood on the inside, like knotty pine, oak, or poplar.
We do this by making a staved core and using a thick veneer
skin on each side.”
When he isn’t matching existing doors, Welch says he’s
bringing an architect’s vision to life. “They specify the exact
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IMPORTED WOOD
design they want, whether it’s straight, square and weird, or
something that’s completely carved and exotic.
“Doors made from Honduran mahogany are vastly
superior in weather resistance to any other species,” says
Welch. “If a customer wants a white oak door on the south
side of a house that has no overhang, where it will be directly
exposed to the weather, I’ll push hard for them to consider
Honduran mahogany. I’ll stand my ground in that situation,
and if they insist on oak we will not warranty the door. The
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