Billings craftsman makes wood work for him
By DIANE COCHRAN
Of The Gazette Staff
An allergy turned Ken Thornton into a log furniture designer and builder.
Thornton worked as a truck mechanic for 25 years before developing a debilitating allergy to certain chemicals.
The allergic reactions were so severe that he lost his upper-body strength and had to quit his job.
"Rather than go on workers' comp or Social Security, I wanted to work," Thornton said.
A chance Christmas gift from his wife launched his career as a woodworker.
"She bought me a little scroll saw," Thornton said. "I sat down at that thing and cut out a little bear, and I fell in love with it."
Thornton spent a few years fabricating cutouts for crafters to paint and sell at craft shows, but there wasn't much money in it.
He started building shelves and other small pieces of furniture to be sold at antique stores - at one point he supplied 70 different stores - but there wasn't much money in that, either.
Eventually, he moved into a storefront on First Avenue South and made some slight adjustments to his craft.
"I just gradually started building bigger furniture and went to a totally different design with log furniture," he said.
Thornton builds what his customers want, and he tailors pieces to fit certain spaces or fill certain functions.
"When people shop at Wal-Mart or Costco, all that stuff is made in a factory somewhere, and there's really no options," he said. "Here, they have any option they want because we're going to build it from the ground up."
He builds pieces as simple as picture frames and as complex as entire kitchens.
"I like to have the kitchen ordered when they break ground on the house, because it takes me as long to build the kitchen as it takes them to build the house," Thornton said.
He pieces cabinets, counters and drawers together in his shop using a floating wall. The wall can be moved to replicate the size of the room the kitchen pieces will eventually fill.
About 90 percent of the lumber Thornton uses has been salvaged from sites of fires or other areas where trees have died, and all of it comes from Montana.
"Rather than let it stay in the woods and let it rot, we cut it into lumber and build furniture out of it," he said.
Kitchens and bedroom sets are common customer requests, but Thornton has also built bars for hunting lodges, hutches for motel rooms and railings for decks and stairways.
"We try to build functional, beautiful furniture at an affordable price," he said.