“The wood almost has its own personality,” Cramer said. “Even though you would think it is completely dead after you’ve cut it down and started working with it, it still has kind of a mind of its own.”
Cramer said he got into woodworking after retiring from the Army and as a police officer. He said he realized those careers were not for him, and he would much rather work with his hands all day, prompting him to study craftsmanship.
After searching for jobs with custom furniture makers in the area and coming up short, Cramer said he decided to open his own business—Heirloom Custom Woodworking—in 2018 where he specializes in custom, hand-made large furniture pieces.
“I prefer furniture; that is kind of where a lot of my passion is,” Cramer said. “Tables, desks, bed frames [and] any larger piece of furniture like that.”
None of his pieces are made with metal fasteners, such as screws, but are held together with mortise and tenons, and dovetail joints, he said.
Cramer said he also spends time with each customer to understand what they want to use the piece for, wanting it to last a lifetime.
“I don’t want to just make things for the customers, but I want it so that they can pass it down generations and it kind of becomes a family-type product rather than just for a few years,” Cramer said.
His favorite type of wood to work with is mesquite, a very hard wood that has “a very crazy and wild grain design is unlike any other species that I’ve seen,” Cramer said. He added that he uses mostly Texas local tree wood he gets from area lumberyards and small business sawmills.
Depending on the pieces, Cramer said each project can take up to a couple of months to complete, but he is more than willing to put in the time.
“I just feel like there was a lack of quality in a lot of things in today’s time,” Cramer said. “I just want to put it back into something as far as things lasting lifetimes, rather than a very materialist sort of view or by just throwing it away in a year or two.”
Heirloom Custom Woodworking
512-948-1512
www.heirloomcustomwoodworking.com
