Sustainability

Sustainability lies at the heart of Urban Hobbit Craftworks. From the sourcing of trees and wood to the designing of finished pieces, careful consideration is given to maximize the use of each tree and minimize the waste from additional materials.

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All wood used in the creation of Urban Hobbit pieces is sourced from urban trees and other, reclaimed urban sources. Urban trees often need to be removed because of storm damage or other natural causes, or have to be taken down for the safety of the surrounding community. These trees are most often tossed into the landfill or busted into firewood. What a waste!

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Master craftsman Chris Legaux receives requests from across the East Tennessee area to visit sites in order to help identify, evaluate, and repurpose trees. While many of these trees come from private residences, Urban Hobbit Craftworks has also up-cycled trees from college campuses and small businesses in the area.

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Once the wood has been sourced, the logs are locally milled then set aside to dry. The drying process is critical to the dimensional stability and beauty of the finished projects. To this end, The Urban Hobbit's lumber is dried using a solar kiln. In the solar kiln, the wood is slowly dried through a natural processes that allows the wood to equalize each day, reducing the stresses and bringing out the unique grains, colors, and figures of each tree.

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Each project from The Urban Hobbit is unique in figure, grain, and size. While all products fit into one of our general size categories, their exact sizes are determined by the pieces of wood used to create them. By using all the wood available from a given cut, fewer resources are discarded as waste.

 

Special projects demand special finishes. At the Urban Hobbit, we strive to use natural finishes such as mineral oil, walnut oil, and local beeswax to preserve the quality and integrity of the wood. When a more durable surface is necessary, we choose finishes with low VOC’s. These finishes are specified in the description of each product.