These days, when enquiries are rare birds, a call from a customer for whom one has worked previously is as cheering as spring birdsong.
This because, if someone is considering commissioning more furniture, it is reasonable to assume that they are pleased with what has already been supplied and, therefore, there is a greater likelihood that the enquiry will become a commission, than there is from a new enquiry.

I received such a call recently and made my visit to meet my client again, discuss the project and to assess the space into which the proposed item is to fit.
It also gave me a chance to see once more the items I had already designed, made and delivered.

It turned out that one of these items was made during the period when I was drying Irish hardwoods in the 1990's.

As I have already posted in The Timber Drying Experiment 21.11.09 that business did not survive but my client hoped that the proposed new item might still be made from Irish timber.

He told me that he knew William Bunbury of the the Lisnavagh Timber Project in County Carlow, so we agreed that I would visit Lisnavagh to see if material, suitable for the proposed furniture item, could be sourced there.
A visit to Lisnavagh was something I had been meaning to do for an age, anyway.

So, last week, off I set to meet William, look at his set-up and inspect the timber stocks.

I will not go into a lot of technical details here, but there are many, many operations to be gone through between a standing tree and a saleable, kiln-dried board, during any one of which disaster can strike and, listening to William, getting through these tasks successfully has become no easier today than it was in the 1990's!
William's greatest advantage is the substantial acreage of mature woodland for him to draw upon at Lisnavagh and, in my view, his wisest move was to develop a product that provides cash-flow, from short-length (unsaleable) material - 'The Bunbury Boards'.
It was cash-flow (or rather the lack of it) that killed-off my attempt!

Anyway, I saw some excellent timber, which means that the key stages of log selection and conversion - or in layman's language 'a good tree, well sawn' - are clearly well in place.

So I await the call from Dena, head of operations at Lisnavagh, to inspect boards that I have specified and she is to select.

Thus, I have every hope and expectation that I will be able to source the material I need for my client, William's friend, from Lisnavagh.