Dark Horse to be featured on CMA shop tour during IWF 2018

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routerphotonewThe International Woodworkers Fair (IWF) is coming to Atlanta in August, and Dark Horse is pleased to be a featured stop on a pre-IWF shop tour organized by the Cabinet Makers Association (CMA). 

The all-day tour on Tuesday, August 21, will include stops at several Atlanta-area shops – Atlanta Cabinet Shop and Custom Creative Furniture are participating along with Dark Horse. (CNC Factory is sponsoring the event.)

“My experience being on the CMA board inspired me to participate,” says Dark Horse owner Chris Dehmer. “It’s great to be part of a group that is so generous with its time and so willing to share its experience. I’m inviting people to come on the CMA tour and tell me what we’re doing wrong!”

Dark Horse has invested in technology to optimize its capabilities and work flow as well as the quality of its products. Tour participants will get a chance to see how a small shop makes use of innovations such as Zero Edge technology and a CNC router.

The shop tour event gets rolling early with a 7:30 am breakfast at the Embassy Suites (Centennial Olympic Park) and continues throughout the day.

Registration includes group transportation as well breakfast, lunch and an evening reception.

The shop tour cost is $55 for current CMA members and $75 for non-members. Student/Instructor members can participate at no charge, while non-member students/instructors will pay a discounted rate of $25. 

You can register via the CMA website.

A lucky glimpse of our work on a “mid-century modern treasure”

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Screen Shot 2017-08-18 at 4.46.51 PMFor most of our projects, we create cabinetry for multiple rooms in a home, and we end up with extensive photos of the final “product” that we share in our gallery.

For a recent project, we worked on only one room, creating high-gloss kitchen cabinetry with the Zero-Edge technology we invested in last year. In this case, we did not do the installation, which is rare for us. Work is hopping, and I never followed up to get post-installation photos of the finished kitchen.

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Fortunately, this beautiful mid-century modern home went on the market not long ago, and it drew the attention of Curbed Atlanta, which featured the home in July (“In Druid Hills, midcentury modern treasure is ‘unadulterated’ for $799K”).

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It was great to see the finished kitchen, and thanks to the kindness of the staff at Domo Realty, which is handling the sale of the home, I’m able to share screenshots of the kitchen here.

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A view of the kitchen from the dining room

If you enjoy mid-century modern, I highly recommend that you take a look at the Curbed Atlanta feature, as well as the Domo Realty listing for extensive photos of this distinctive home.

And the folks at Domo also passed on a compliment that we appreciated: The house is under contract, and they told us that the kitchen helped sell the house. We enjoy seeing all of our projects through from start to finish, and that kind of feedback is the icing on the cake.

Seamless: Dark Horse acquires “Zero-Edge” capabilities

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We have big news that our friends in the furniture and wood-working world may understand best: We’ve acquired the technology to produce cabinetry and furniture components with seamless edges.

Zero-Edge Technology, as it’s usually called, is a game-changer for our company and the industry as a whole.

Why is it such a big deal?

In short, because it’s always a challenge to add edge-banding to panels without a noticeable seam that is prone to fail eventually. Zero-Edge banding is more heat- and moisture-resistant than typical edge treatments.

REHAU, a polymer company, agreed to let us share these images from a presentation they created:

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One of the trends we’re seeing in our work is the increasing demand for high-gloss cabinetry, and to create these cabinets, you have to have zero-edge capability.

With gloss acrylic, you can’t have a glue line, so the zero-edge machine melts the back of the edge and trims it off so your creation appears to have always been a single component.

If you happen to be fascinated by technology, design and woodworking/cabinetry, and getting into the nitty-gritty of this sort of thing interests you, the folks at Woodworking Canada have written a great article about the future of Zero-Edge technology. Here are a few of the highlights/excerpts from the article:

“If what’s happening in Europe is any indication, and it usually is, then the demand for zero edge will increase dramatically in North America and Canada, and most experts agree that in as little as two to five years, invisible edges will make up a significant portion of our market as well.” ~ Murat Dugan, president of IMA Canada Corp, a pioneer in edge-banding

How does it work? 

“Using a co-extruded, active layer that is colour-matched – rather than applying hot-melt glue as is the norm in traditional edge-banders – the new system creates a zero edge or invisible glue line that is difficult to distinguish from one produced using a laser unit.”

What are the advantages?

“Not only is zero-edge aesthetically pleasing, but it also makes for stronger and longer-lasting edges and offers anti-bacterial benefits that make it a great solution for restaurants, health-care and similar public uses.”

And zero-edge is often necessary for “contemporary, slab or high-gloss cabinetry, which continues to grow in popularity.”

We love being ahead of the curve at Dark Horse – thanks to our new investment, we can produce the high-gloss acrylic cabinetry called for in our next two projects. The zero-edge machine also opens the door to commercial projects and will enable us to provide some services that shops and even homeowners in the region have not had access to until now.

Stay tuned to see what new territory Dark Horse heads into next!