Premium High Quality Walnut Louvered Walnut Exterior Shutters
Estate Millwork Walnut Exterior Shutters
Walnut exterior wooden shutter sets are an excellent choice for homeowners who are concerned with value and quality. Walnut is an exceptionally sturdy domestic hardwood with a handsome, chocolate-brown luster. Its strength makes it an optimal wooden shutter material.
Unlike competitors, our walnut wooden shutters are crafted from 100 percent genuine walnut wood. We refuse to offer our customers inferior products, and allow no plastic fillers or cheap, particle-board sections in our walnut exterior wood shutters. Each shutter set is made to ensure that you.ll enjoy a return on your investment for years to come.
At Estate Millwork, quality of craftsmanship is one primary concern. Environmental preservation is another. All of our domestic walnut wood vendors use green harvesting techniques. We strive to offer an environmentally friendly working environment at our shutter plant, too. All walnut shutter scraps are used in other projects or burned for fuel in the colder months. We also enforce strict temperature controls to save on fuel, while scheduling work shifts to ensure maximum worker health and productivity.
Walnut Wood: A Top-Grade Exterior Shutter Material
Beautiful hardwood: Walnut wood is a shutter material that's very pleasing to the eye. This hardwood ranges in color from pale cream-mocha to deep chocolate brown. Walnut's distinctive growth rings add character to the wood, and, when finished or stained, walnut shutters glow with a rich sheen.
Strength makes for sturdy shutters: Walnut wood is very dense and strong, making it perfect for shutters that must endure the elements. This is a highly workable wood, as well; its ability to be carved and shaped makes it a top choice for guitar bodies, shotguns, furniture, and flooring.
Each set of walnut exterior shutters is crafted using genuine walnut wood and sturdy mortise-and-tenon joinery.
Choose from several Estate Millwork walnut wooden shutter styles, including:
Raised Panel Walnut Exterior Shutters:
Raised panel walnut shutters are among the most versatile styles of shutters available. The rectangular center panels or the sturdy wooden frames can be customized with detailed carving work. Complement your walnut wooden shutters with weatherproof stains that highlight the unique grain of the wood.
Flat Panel Walnut Wood Shutter Sets:
These shutters differ from raised panel shutters slightly; the centered walnut panels are recessed inside the frames. However, the flat panel wooden shutter style is just as versatile and customizable as its raised-panel counterpart; both styles suit a variety of architectural designs.
Bahama Walnut Wooden Shutters:
Bahama shutters, also known as Bermuda shutters, are designed to withstand the rough weather often found in hurricane-prone regions, including high winds and torrential downpours. Bahama walnut exterior shutters are top-hinged rather than side-hinged, so they can be quickly shut in advance of inclement weather. The Bahama shutter also offers excellent climate control in humid areas.
Board and Batten Wooden Walnut Shutters:
The board and batten exterior walnut shutter style is reminiscent of American Frontier architecture; however, this shutter style can be customized to lend modern touches to any home. These sturdy, walnut slab-style shutters offer superior durability and climate control.
Louvered Walnut Exterior Wood Shutters:
Louvered walnut wooden shutters consist of slender, solid wood slats framed by sturdy, 100-percent real wood rectangles. If you want to save money on your cooling bills, install a few sets of louvered walnut shutters. The slats offer excellent cross-ventilation to cool your living space.
Gorgeous, rugged walnut wood makes an attractive choice for your customized exterior shutter sets. An Estate Millwork telephone representative can help you customize your walnut shutters to suit your tastes.
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.
Walnut: A Tapestry of Rich Color and Timeless Heritage
Walnut hardwood lumber stands as a premier domestic wood prized for its opulent hues and superb finishing characteristics. Characterized by a slightly open grain ranging from wavy to irregular, along with a uniform medium to coarse texture, walnut presents a distinctive aesthetic unmatched by other North American species. Its signature chocolate-brown heartwood, unique to the species, exudes warmth and sophistication, making it an exquisite choice for doors, paneling, and furniture.
Walnut's legacy traces back to colonial times, when it was exported to Europe for furniture and interior woodworking due to its abundant availability and affordability compared to mahogany. Today, walnut remains a cherished favorite for furniture and interior applications, its popularity rivaling that of cherry wood. Notably, walnut's allure has extended to the marine industry, where boat builders incorporate its dark tones into yacht interiors, providing a striking contrast to the lighter hues of teak.
At its core, walnut wood epitomizes luxury, elevating any space it graces. Freshly milled walnut exhibits a diverse array of color hues, ranging from deep browns to subtle purples and creams. Steam treatment can mitigate some of these variations, yielding a more uniform and mellower chocolate hue. Over time, through oxidation and exposure to sunlight, walnut undergoes a natural lightening process, seamlessly blending with other wood species while retaining its timeless charm and elegance.
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
