What does an Amish poly furniture shop really look like inside? How is poly outdoor furniture made? Find your answers here in this Amish Poly Furniture Shop Tour video from DutchCrafters.
How is Poly Furniture Made?
The process of turning HDPE plastic, like milk jugs, into furniture is a complicated and highly technical one. But we tried to simplify it in our video animation, What is Poly Furniture? (in 1 Minute). Click the link to watch the video in a new tab.
However, by the time we reach the furniture shop, the plastic has already been turned into composite plastic lumber, dyed in a variety of colors. That’s where this video picks up.
Inside a Poly Lumber Furniture Shop
Poly lumber arrives to the shop on pallets, organized by color and length—much the same way that wood arrives in wood shops organized by wood type and length. From there, the lumber can be worked with in a similar way to wood. Furniture builders even use many of the same tools—chop saws, sanders, routers, and drills.
Amish Poly Furniture Shop Tour
This tour begins at the front door, where Amish employees of the shop hang that hats and set down their lunchboxes before they start their work.
The right wall as you enter is no wall at all, but really stacks and stacks of pallets of poly lumber, all organized by length and color. It’s accessible from the outside of the shop or the inside, for easy access.
The furniture craftsmen start by cutting the lumber to length for the products they’re producing. Then, guides are used to mark the curves and cutouts for each detailed cut necessary to turn that lumber into a chair arm, a back slat, or a seat.
It’s all cut to shape and then routed to round-off edges and sanded to smooth the cut surfaces.
Finally, the furniture can be assembled into its final product at assembly tables.
After assembly, all the furniture is organized and stored in the warehouse half of the shop until trucks arrive to pick up the orders and deliver them to eager customers.
Throughout the process, plastic scraps and shavings are collected and organized into boxes to be recycled again!
Amish Poly Furniture
As we walked through the shop, we were impressed by the orderliness and efficiency by which they produced this furniture. It’s clearly a small shop with a very organized process.
Poly furniture also has the advantage of being pre-colored and dyed throughout the lumber, so it doesn’t need to be finished before delivery to the shoppers; this means delivery can occur much sooner than it does for indoor wood furniture.
This shop, like all Amish wood shops we work with, is off the grid. They will use the best tools to produce your furniture but believe in a separation from mainstream society. So, they maintain distinctive attire and motorless personal transportation outside the shop; in the shop, they produce their own electricity rather than reliance on the power grid.
Poly Furniture Collections at DutchCrafters
DutchCrafters is the largest online store for Amish furniture and shoppers love our outdoor furniture. We offer hundreds of poly outdoor furniture designs from dozens of shops. Consider all the options at our poly outdoor furniture page.