Wallace and Hinz Tour

Terry Beaudet gave us a terrific tour of the facilities, which are divided into three main areas: office, warehouse, and workshop.

Office

The Wallace & Hinz office space is bright, warm, and fairly conventional, with cubical-style work areas. Terry said that sales, design, shop drafting, project management (which is one of Terry's jobs), and facilities management all take place out of this office.

Terry warned that doing a trade show in New York City is very expensive because of Union labor. It cost them more to ship the trade show bar from New Jersey to New York than it had to ship it from California to New Jersey!

The trade show itself was extremely expensive just to attend, and then there were the travel and hotel, plus the extra costs they ran up because of various problems that they had while they were there. So it's pricey to do a trade show in New York!

Workflow

During the course of the tour, Terry talked about the general workflow at Wallace & Hinz and the overall process by which their bars are created. Before proceeding any further, let's review this process.

When Wallace & Hinz receives an inquiry about making a bar, they decline to quote a price until after a week or two of consultation has occurred. The consultation is necessary to an accurate price quote because they need a solid handle on the extent of the job; otherwise, they tend to undercharge and be held to that quote.

They used to draw up plans for a prospective customer before signing contracts but have had to discontinue that practice. They found that, once the customer received the plans and the quote, they tended to take their business to a local woodworker who was willing to do the work (from Wallace & Hinz's plans) for a cheaper rate.

Once the consultation is over, the quote has been made and accepted, and the contracts have been signed, the actual plans for the bar are drafted in AutoCad. Wallace & Hinz employs a specialist to draw up plans.

Wallace & Hinz employs a number of people in their shop who specialize in one particular task. For instance, they have one guy who just cuts panel goods, another guy who's their shaper man, shaping moldings and radius moldings, someone else who applies finishes, several others doing sanding, etc. They also outsource a fair amount of work to specialists in the community, such as wood carvers, CNC shapers, or specialty stained glass workers.

It appeared to me that Wallace & Hinz is moving away from doing all of their own parts fabrication, and trying to focus on the planning, assembly, finish, and installation work. They seem to be doing basic parts fabrication in house, but outsourcing much of the rest. (Doors, drawers, carvings, moldings and the CNC work.)

A dry-assembly of the components occurs to ensure that all parts have been created or are in the pipeline. The bars are staged completely to assure that they will go together as planned when installed at the jobsite, then broken down, stained and finished, then post assembled (re-attaching the hardware, doors and drawers,) then packed for shipping.

Once the bar has been completed and assembled in the Assembly Room, the components are disassembled and packed for shipping. If the customer is doing their own installation, an installation manual and hardware kit is created and packed with the bar components; if Wallace & Hinz is doing the installation, no instructions are considered necessary for their team. Terry said that their best installation guy is the owner of the company, who used to do installation for the previous incarnation of Wallace & Hinz.

Wallace & Hinz tries to keep accurate records of everything that is done on a particular job, especially the types of finish used, etc. Customers often need bars renovated or changed sometime down the line, and return to Wallace & Hinz for these changes. Terry said that they don't always need to check their records... but whenever they do, it seems that the thing they need to know is the thing they forgot to write down. Let this be a lesson to us all to keep painstakingly-accurate records!

Warehouse

Now, let us return to the tour. Across the parking area from the office, Terry led us into a large warehouse space. Here's a picture:

Workshop

Terry then took us into the Workshop area. Although they are outsourcing more and more of their parts fabrication, they still do a great deal in house. One of the more interesting pieces of equipment was a computer-controlled fence on their jump saw, shown here:

This jump saw has a 20" sawblade. Measurements are made using decimal increments. This also reduces the likelihood of error. Terry said that using fractions for measurements is confusing and increased error, so the decimal system is better.

Terry also talked about jointing and planing wood. He recommends that you feed the wood slowly into the machinery; though it takes longer, you minimize scallops and reduce sanding issues.

Radius shaping was another big topic. There are radius moldings (curved moldings around corners) on almost every Wallace & Hinz bar. They don't have a CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) router, but create radius moldings in the old-school way with an appropriate shaper using jigs of various types. Among other things, Terry showed us a "record player jig" which was basically a turntable to which you affixed your workpiece, allowing you to turn the wood past the shaper, creating a curve. He warned that you often got tearout when you hit the side-grain, so to proceed carefully.

Here is Terry with the shaper used for radius shaping:

Terry said that radiused bar walls are veneered using a vacuum press system, such as the one we saw at last month's meeting. He says that you take the platen out of the bag, and that the vacuum bag does the pressing for irregular forms quite satisfactorily.

Terry also talked about bar tops. He said that quarter sawn lumber is more stable than other types, that it doesn't cup as much. He said that they do most of their thicknessing using a wide belt sander. Terry said that sanding the wood down took longer, but avoided the tearout problems associated with a planer, and so was less risky.

Terry then took us into the Assembly Room, where the bars are assembled; sanding also takes place here.

Terry showed us a 3-sided glue-up of pieces which had been shaped by Bert Hafar, one of our members, on his CNC setup (demonstrated to the HWS last year). Here's a picture:

The assembled components of the bars are put together in the Staging Room, shown here:

There was also a large stained glass panel from a back bar at the Blue Lake Casino which was having the name changed out, shown here:

With mahogany color, for instance, they mist a die color onto the wood, then, once that's dry, they wipe a stain over that to get a good, consistent burgundy color. Terry said that it was difficult for them to get two pieces to match. He said it looks OK, but "don't take it into the sunlight while the client's there."

Terry also pointed out some features of their bars, including access panels built into the bottle storage areas, which could be removed in order to access wiring behind the bar.

Terry said that their Back-Bar countertops could be either plastic laminate, or veneered plywood. The Bar Tops consist of a layer of exterior grade ACX plywood with glued-up solid wood on top. He said that solid wood alone tends to expand/contract, so it is NOT affixed to the sub-top with glue. Rather, it is held in place with screws and fender washers. There is a high-density wax sheeting applied between the top and sub-top.

We then went into the Finishing Room. They spray the finish onto the bar parts. Since you don't want wind blowing your finish around while spraying, they block off their ventilation system while spraying because they're having positive pressure problems with their ventilation system at the moment. Terry says: Since corrected, now working as designed. The positive air inflow (heated as needed) and 42" exhaust fan are now in synch (FINALLY!)

Once all of the parts of the bar are finished, they go outside to Crating. They now use paper and an expanding-foam gun while crating to protect the finish on the bars. They used to have a lot of damage issues, but, with the expanding-foam, they rarely have damage anymore.

Although they use both FedEx and UPS for shipping, they prefer FedEx because of its excellent control for shipping quality. UPS is not as good with fragile items. Terry says: We ship the large crates FedEx Freight, any extras (after the fact small parcels) are sent UPS and, if fragile, we pack them very carefully!

Thank you, Terry for an enjoyable tour!

This article was written by Michael Masumoto, with assistance from David "Kai" Herd.