About

FRED SAVAGE

Fred Savage has been creating custom design furniture for over 20 years, with a focus on sustainably harvested wood. His passion for all types of trees has led him on his path of creating reclaimed wood furniture. His designs have evolved over the years as different lumber has become available to him, from live edge hardwood to reclaimed barnwood to westcoast beach salvaged lumber.

Fred’s passion for the forests extends to each piece of reclaimed lumber that is used in his eco-friendly woodworking shop. From the grace of natural edge walnut planks to the depth and beauty that years of wear give to reclaimed pine, each piece is designed to show off the brilliance of nature’s creations.

The strength of traditional joinery combined with Fred’s incredible eye for proportions gives each piece of furniture a lasting look, while being custom built to suit your needs.

LUMBER

Lumber for your piece of custom built furniture is chosen from our extensive stock of antique, reclaimed and salvaged hardwoods and softwoods. Fred knows the history of every board in his collection, from the white pine and hardwoods reclaimed from the barns and mills of Eastern Canada, to the salvaged lumber washing up on the beaches of the Pacific Northwest island where he lives.

HARDWARE

All of the hardware used in the building of furniture at Savage Woodworking is carefully chosen to suit the design of the piece. We build many pieces of furniture with hand-forged hardware, and hardware sourced for its authenticity of design. Fred sometimes works directly with a blacksmith to design hardware with just the right proportions to accent your piece of hand crafted furniture.

CONSTRUCTION

Using age-old building techniques, for style and function, Fred creates each custom built furniture piece with extremely strong joints. Many pieces are ‘knockdown’ designs and are easily disassembled and reassembled for ease of shipping. Your piece may include sliding dovetails, mortise and tenon joints, visible pegs and shims, and butterfly joints, often created with contrasting varieties of wood. Joints are built to ‘breathe’ with the seasons, allowing for a small amount of expansion and contraction.

ECO-ETHICS

Savage Woodworking maintains a high level of environmental responsibility, not only in our use of recycled wood, but also in the eco-friendly products used to finish our hand crafted furniture.

Our shop runs on a low to no V.O.C. policy with regards to all products used, meaning that you can rest assured that your custom built furniture is responsibly crafted, from our use of reclaimed lumber to the final finish. Many of our customers choose to have their furniture finished in a selection of natural oils and waxes as this gives a finish that will stand up to the everyday use of a kitchen table while showing off the wood with a soft depth and luster achieved with layers of hand applied and rubbed finishes.

Our extensive collection of lumber has been sourced from barns, mills and houses, many of these originating from Ontario, where building was done with wide white pine and a selection of hardwoods, including walnut, cherry, elm and oak.  Since re-locating to the West coast of Canada, Fred Savage has been adding to his collection with beach salvaged lumber and old growth re-claimed from the cast-offs of the logging industry.  All of these methods of obtaining lumber save a portion of the remaining forests of today from being cut.

When lumber is reclaimed from 100-200 year old buildings, it carries the history of its roots in the forest, to the saws used to mill it, to the carpenters who built with it.  This history is passed along to you in the stories told through your furniture.