Premium High Quality Sapele Louvered Wooden Shutters
Wooden Shutter Quality Craftsmanship
All of Estate Millwork's wooden shutters are built with top grades of hardwoods. We actively manage our production in an environmentally conscious way, and offer a wide range of styles to meet different architectural traditions. Because we use true mortise and tenon joinery, all of our wooden shutters are durable, and historically accurate. Our raised and flat panel wooden shutters are built with exact spline tongue joints, and our board and batten style wooden shutters are built with tongue and groove boards, and coved battens.
Because of the elegance of true wooden shutters, they do much more than synthetic or composite counterparts to enhance the curb appeal of distinctive homes. Our wooden shutters are can be configured as operational, or decorative wooden shutters, and if properly maintained will outlast the windows they protect. Many of the historic and distinctive homes in America adorn Estate Millwork's premium grade wooden shutters, both in interior and exterior configurations. Use our catalog as a starting point for design ideas, and use our simple web based designers to quickly design and price all of our wooden products.
Wooden Shutter Features
Shutters milled from the highest grades of FAS premium hardwoods
Fully customizable wooden shutter louvers and fixtures
Free help from our custom wooden shutter experts
Energy efficient exterior wooden shutters
Sound dampening interior wooden shutters
Automated solid wood milling process
Priming and finishing for either exterior shutter or interior shutter uses
Wooden Shutter Construction Details
Our wooden shutters begin with the hand selected of rough stock wood. Only the top grades of hardwood are used (FAS, 2FAS and CLEAR) and each board is hand selected. Unlike the competition, our use of the highest quality hardwoods. Other manufactures who use softwood such as Pine, Incense Cedar, or Western Red Cedar. By hand selecting each board we use in your wooden shutters, we reduce waste, maximize the quality of construction and provide homes in any climate with top quality, durable, wooden shutters that will outlast other shutters, whether they be lower quality wooden shutters or vinyl shutters. We offer many high quality / high durability exotic hardwoods such as Ipe, Mahogany, and Teak.
Our wooden shutters are all custom crafted to meet the required size and style specifications for your home or commercial space. We use 18th century wooden shutter joinery methods modernized, automated mill. Our solid cut wooden shutters can be designed custom with operable louvers or fixed louvers in nearly any configuration using many high quality wood stock including cedar, poplar, cherry, mahogany, maple, oak, and teak. Our synthesis of old-world craftsmanship and modern automation allow us to produce wooden shutters that surpass the quality of our competitors while still offering competitive pricing.
Advantages of Our Wooden Shutters
Whole cut from single, solid pieces of wood, our solid wooden shutters provide a superior level of quality and durability. Be aware that many of our competitors fabricate their wooden shutters from a combination of multiple pieces of low grade and high grade wood, causing them to be less durable and less energy efficient. High quality woods are used on the exterior of the shutters but they are actually filled with low quality stock woods. This gives their wooden shutters the appearance of being high quality full cut shutters. However, the inferior materials cause the shutters to be less durable and less energy efficient. In addition to the high level of quality materials that you have to choose from, our superior level of customization ensures a superior quality wooden shutter that matches your needs and fits your commercial space or home perfectly.
Energy Efficient Wooden Shutters - Whole cut solid wood is used in the fabrication of our exterior and interior wooden shutters.. This will protect you from cracks, low quality joins, thin, porous filler wood being used for insulation, or other lower quality milling processes that can cause wooden shutters to seep warm air in the winter or cool air in the summer. Additionally, our custom wooden shutters design process ensures that our shutters fit your windows seamlessly and will protect your home or office heating and cooling bills with the most energy efficient wooden shutters on the market today.
Superior Durability - Ultra high quality, FAS premium grade hard woods are hand selected for the milling of both our interior wooden shutters and exterior wooden shutters. Choose from poplar wood, mahogany wood, teak wood, cherry wood, maple wood, cedar wood, and oak wood. Different wood types exhibit varying tolerances to different climates and environments. If you need guidance or advice in choosing hardwoods that compliment your location best, please feel free to call our wooden shutter customization experts at [an error occurred while processing this directive] for assistance.
Fully Customizable Shutters- Receive exactly the shutters that compliment your home or business best with 1) our web based custom wooden shutter design tools, 2) via phone while working with the our custom wooden shutter experts, 3) or on your own from sketches or examples. You have the freedom to choose your wooden shutter type, style, size, finish, hardware and more. We even make fully custom interior and exterior wooden shutters from your hand drawn or rendered sketches! Our successful combination of automation and old world techniques ensure that you receive the elegant look that matches your interior or exterior decor perfectly.
Solid Wood Mortise and Tenons
True Tenons
Our premium quality shutters are carefully constructed using a time consuming and precise operation. Whereas other lower quality shutters are made using screws, nails, dowels or biscuit joints, each of our exterior wooden shutters has a minimum of 4 hardwood tenons. The end of each rail is painstakingly machined to have a 1/2" X 1 7/8" tenon by a custom built tenoning machine that Estate Millwork developed so that we could continue to provide the best quality joinery in the industry, at an attractive price. We gave up the cost, but not the quality.
Deep Pocket Mortises
Each stile is precision machined with a minimum of two deep pocket mortises, and these mortises perfectly fit the associated tenon. Again, Estate Millwork has used precision automation to preserve the quality of our products, while reducing the cost. We have software that connects our website directly to the machines in the plant, and when a customer places an order with us, all of the precision programs for machining the mortises into the stiles are sent to the plant for automatic execution. The mortise tenon joint, is the strongest joint in millwork, and adds tremendous strength, even without the use of glue.
Hardwood Dowels
Once the tenon and mortise have been machined, the parts are put together and a hole is drilled through the mortise and the tenon. A slightly oversized hardwood dowel is driven into the hole, locking the tenon into the mortise for the life of the shutter. Even though glue is not required, Estate Millwork takes the added step of gluing the tenon into the mortise, and gluing the hardwood dowel into the stile.
Hand Assembly
In our commitment to preserving the best of quality millwork traditions in each wood shutter, we have automated much of the drudgery of some of the operations, but assembling a shutter is still something very much in the realm of craftsmanship. After all the parts of each wooden shutter are manufactured, one of our skilled craftsmen fits them together in a specialized jig for dry fitting and final assembly. We do not use pneumatic or hydraulic clamps as they can damage or over-stress the wood. The craftsman uses his innate feel for the materials to set the appropriate clamping pressure prior to drilling and doweling. Each wooden shutter receives the individual attention of craftsmen all along the way, but the final assembly is where the shutter comes together the first time, ready for years of service on your home.
Precision Crafted Louvered Shutters Using State of the Art CNC Machinery
Solid Louvers
Each louver in our louvered shutters is precision machined in a 5 head moulder that can be configured to mould any of our 3 standard production profiles, or custom profiles as specified by the customer. We offer 1/2" X 2 1/4", 3/8" X 1 3/4", and 1/4" X 1 1/4" bullnose profiles, but also have tooling for chevron, beveled, and other louver profiles. Whether the louvered shutter is to use fixed louver or operable louvers, we can even create custom tooling to match existing millwork, or to provide the ultimate in personalization and detailing.
True Louvered Shutter Mortises and Louver Mortises
Each louver in a fixed louvered shutter is seated in a 7/16" deep mortise in the shutter stile. Our CNC machining equipment be instantly programmed to program any variation of louver size, profile, pitch, and spacing, that gives us unlimited flexibility to match historic millwork, or to create custom louvered shutters to a precise specification in terms of louver count, rail placement, and air flow. In the same pass as the louver mortises are being created, our equipment also creates the larger mortises for each rail in the shutter. Unlike many custom shutter manufacturers today, Estate Millwork does not use cheap dowels, veneers, screws, or biscuits. Instead we use old fashioned mortise and tenon joints, even though they are considered by other custom shutter manufacturers as too expensive. Because we have invested heavily in automation, our cost to produce highly custom louvered shutters using solid materials and premium joinery is much lower than other manufacturers, hence: higher quality, lower price.
Solid Tenons
The tenons on both ends of each rail are engineered to give maximum stability to the louvered shutter frame, and when combined with our hardwood dowling, the shutter frame will stay together and be extremely stable, even without glue. But of course we use glue for added strength. For larger louvered shutters, we use a 10 inch baserail that has two tenons and a third feather tenon for additional strength that connects the two main tenons. These tenons are precision machined on a propriety tenon machine that Estate Millwork designed and custom built. Our sophisticated mortise and tenon joinery preserves 100% of the quality of traditional mortise and tenon joinery at a fraction of the cost.
Shutter Options
Thickness, Width, Height
The "slab dimensions" are the size of the actual exterior shutter from top to bottom, left to right, and the thickness. Our default standard thickness is 1 5/16", but that can be varied from 7/8" to 2 1/4" to match existing exterior shutters. The length and height can be specified to the nearest 1/16" inch. Depending upon the style of the shutter, we have made widths up to 20 feet wide, and heights up 30 feet.
Shutter Frame Dimensions
Because all of our exterior wooden shutters are custom built from true rail and stile construction, we have the ability to replicate any component dimension on existing shutters, including rail height, placement, width, thickness, and stile width and thickness. Typically, the bottom rail of our custom shutters is 4. high, and all other rails are 2 1/2" inches. Stile widths are usually 2 1/2" but we have the ability to make them of virtually any width, including different widths for left and right stiles -- sometimes used for pairs of shutters.
Custom Sticking
Out standard products are S4S, or square shoulder sticking, but we have the capability to mould any feasible profile to the inner or outer frame fields. Common choices are ogee, cove and bead, bevel, cove etc. In addition to our stock sticking profiles, we can also custom grind tooling to achieve any desired profile to either match historical wood shutters, or to meet an architects or home owner.s specifications and preferences.
Shiplapping and Beading
For operable shutters, or for decoration, our wood shutters can be machined with a bead on one face of the inside edge of the shutter, and with a ship lap on the other, allowing the shutters to overlap by 3/8" when they are in the closed position - permitting a tighter fit. The left and right shutters are machined as pairs so that in the closed position, each face of the pair has a decorative bead visible.
Panel Profiles
Our raised panel shutters can be raised with our standard scoop profile, but we offer bevels, coves, ogeees and other profiles as well. Additionally, for the extremely discriminating home owner or architect we can create new tooling to match existing historical panel profiles, or to meet with a unique custom requirement.
Louver Styles
Our louvered shutters can be fitted with either our standard bullnose louvers in 3 sizes, or with a chevron or bevel profile as options. And because we are a custom shutter maker, we can also accommodate any special profiles that are specified by the customer.
Cut Outs
Raised Panel and Flat Panel Shutters can have a limitless variety of decorative cut outs machined into the center of the panels. Common shapes are moons, anchors, trees, hearts and we have a large number of stock cut outs which we offer, as well as the ability to match custom patterns that are provided by the customer
Finishes
Estate Millwork can ship our custom wooden shutters in natural, primed, painted or stained finishes. We can match national brand color numbers, pre-tint primers for light or dark finishes, and apply hand rubbed stain finished, even to the time consuming louvered shutters.
Exquisite and Durable Sapele Hardwood: A Hidden Treasure
Sapele lumber, sourced from the sapele tree native to the tropical regions of West Africa, stands as a prized gem in the realm of fine woodworking. Renowned for its stunning appearance, remarkable durability, and versatile nature, sapele wood is cherished by woodworkers and builders alike for its myriad of applications.
Often hailed as the "African mahogany," sapele hardwood boasts a captivating palette ranging from rich reddish-brown to deep mahogany, acquiring a luxurious patina with age that enhances its innate elegance. Its distinctive ribbon-like grain patterns and lustrous finish add an air of sophistication to any project, captivating designers and craftsmen seeking to create visually striking pieces.
Beyond its aesthetic allure, sapele hardwood offers exceptional durability, withstanding wear, decay, and rot with ease. Whether utilized for interior or exterior projects, sapele's stability and strength ensure longevity and functionality for generations to come.
Highly workable and responsive to finishing techniques, sapele hardwood lends itself to a myriad of design possibilities. Whether applying a clear finish to accentuate its rich grain or opting for a darker stain to infuse depth and character, sapele adapts effortlessly to achieve desired aesthetics. From fine furniture and cabinetry to boat building and musical instruments, sapele hardwood proves its versatility time and again, cementing its status as a valuable asset in the world of woodworking and interior design.
Handcrafted with Sustainably Harvested Lumber
At Estate Millwork, we employ a meticulous process to ensure the quality and sustainability of our lumber. Our commitment begins with the careful air drying of much of our lumber, followed by further refinement in low wattage dehumidification kilns to achieve optimal moisture levels.
Every single piece of wood we acquire undergoes thorough utilization in our production processes. Leveraging advanced automated saws and optimization software, we achieve an exceptional yield ratio of 94 percent. This means that nearly all of the wood we purchase is transformed into usable products. The small remainder, comprising mainly sawdust and chips, is utilized efficiently: either utilized as fuel to power our operations, or repurposed by providing bedding and contributing to composting for local cattle farmers.
Our dedication to minimizing waste extends to the sourcing of our materials. A significant portion of the lumber we use hails from Amish farmers within our county. These farmers adhere to traditional practices, utilizing horses for harvesting and operating vintage 1920s sawmills. Such methods not only contribute to the preservation of heritage techniques but also entail lower environmental impact compared to modern industrial approaches.
Furthermore, our commitment to sustainability is evident in the sourcing of our imported lumber. We exclusively procure lumber from plantation-grown sources, thereby ensuring that our operations do not contribute to deforestation or the depletion of natural forests. By prioritizing responsible sourcing and efficient utilization, Estate Millwork strives to uphold environmental stewardship while delivering exceptional craftsmanship.
To learn more about our sustainability practices click here
