I’ve just started painting our lunchroom. Revamping it after years of hard use.
It’s amazing how many moving parts there are at a factory. The constant motions, change, fixing, rebuilding, but the community of it, remains the same forever.
Sure like every relationship, it has its ups and downs, hard times and good.
It helps when something comes along and humbles you. Waking you up from the everyday repetitive loop you can linger in.
Last week, we had a spontaneous combustion fire here at “the mill,” our factory and home to more than fifty employees.
The event surely humbled and awoke us.
We were very fortunate, walking away with minimal damage.
Life can remind you in harsh and subtle ways that in fact it can end or change at any moment.
On that dreaded Sunday night, anxiously racing over, we found several employees coming in at different times to help.
No time cards clocked, working into the late hours of the night only to be back Monday morning, just a few short hours later.
This week we wish to thank all of our employees for their dedication to Manchester Wood. Also to all manufacturing companies in America who fight everyday to survive in our country.
To the hardworking and downtrodden, your fellow man thanks you.
Also to our Mother Earth for giving us such amazing resources!
Tags: American Made, Factory, Fire, Furniture, Green, Manchester Wood, Small Business, Vermont, VT, Wood
Uncategorized | admin August 18, 2010 | 
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Television sets had just entered the American public in the early 1950s. Families began to spend time together with this new contraption.
Early popular shows like “Lassie,” “Bonanza,” and “Three Stooges” were enjoyed after a long day. The family began to make dinnertime, a “TV” time.
The evolution of dinnertime with the family was complete in 1954 when Gerry Thomas invented the “Swanson TV Dinner.”
The first TV Dinner contained turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, and peas packaged in an organized tray. It was sold for under $1.
After Swanson sold millions of these TV Dinners, furniture companies followed with the development of the TV tray table. As seen above, original TV tray tables were aluminum, featuring folding tops, and collapsible legs.
It was the ultimate combination in convenience, and the popularity of the product grew into several designs and materials as we grew through the early years of TV.
Manchester Wood entered the TV tray table business. We’ve been making them for 35 years though, so not so far off.
In the beginning, we made the same classic TV tray table – just like all the rest. And like many others we evolved our products just like the entertainment that attracts us.
TV dinners and even tray tables seem distant from the current media connection frenzy we now experience. Computers have become the latest contraption, and our time spent using them has increased tremendously, moving away from the couch and TV experience.
The TV tray table is becoming to us, a computer tray table. Take a look at our new Folding Portable Work Table below. To learn more about this product,
click here.
It was named “America’s Sport.”The game of Baseball grew as America did. The sport was much like the freshly formulated country; it was for both the rich and poor. Young immigrants took to it in the streets of New York and the open fields of Nebraska, dreaming to be their new found heroes.
One of those early American settlers was “Bud” Hillerich. In 1880, at 14, he’d begin to learn his father, Johann Fredrich Hillerich trade by serving as an apprentice in his woodworking shop.
His father went mostly by J.F. Hillerich, and was a German born citizen, looking for a fresh start in America. He was proud of his young boy, and let him work on side projects in his shop.
At 18, Bud went to work on a baseball bat for the company’s first professional ballplayer, Pete Browning, who played for the Louisville Eclipse. Browning nicknamed the bat “The Louisville Slugger.”
The popularity grew, orders started coming in all over the country. Johann changed the woodshops name to “J.F. Hillerich & Son.” “The Louisville Slugger,” baseball’s premier bat, was born.
From Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, to today’s stars, “The Louisville Slugger” remains the prized possession of the best hitters in Baseball.
What does this have to do with Manchester Wood and our furniture? We use the same sturdy, long lasting White Ash in our furniture as they’ve used all these years on their bats.
White ash is considered the “premiere species” of North American ashes, for being hard, strong, exceeding bending qualities, and easily worked in our mill.
“The Louisville Slugger,” web site states, “Pound per pound, ash is the strongest timber available. Ash has a flexibility that isn’t found in other timbers like maple. It tends to flex rather than break, which gives a strong ‘sweet spot’ in terms of breakage. Ash is lighter than maple, giving a wider range of large barrel models.”
Although we don’t use our durable, long-last White Ash for home runs at the ballpark, we do on our indoor items, giving customers products lasting for generations at a fair price.
