Zongkers Custom Woods Inc

Zongkers Custom Woods Inc
Listing #717 Listed on: 08/08

WOODWEB Content Editor, Ted Cushman, Interviewed Dennis Zongker in September 2008

One Piece at a Time

Cabinetmaking is a tough, competitive business, and furniture-making is a challenging craft. So in the world of woodworking, it’s pretty rare to find a business that can succeed at both. But that's what Zongkers Custom Woodworking (www.zongkers.com) is doing. From their nine-man shop in a former Metz Beer brewery in Omaha, Nebraska (one of the oldest buildings in town), brothers Dennis and Dan Zongkers have built up a million-dollar annual volume, expanding the market for their one-of-a-kind furniture pieces and custom cabinets far beyond their own region. "We're in about 41 states now," says Dennis Zongker, "and we just sold a couple pieces to a buyer in Hawaii."

Continue Reading about Zongkers Custom Woods Inc

View this member's Project Gallery listings:

Majestic Griffin Style End Table

Chess Table, Chairs, & Chess Set

Acanthus Leaf "Theme "Dining Table & Chairs

Carved Purpleheart Medal of Honour

Replica Carving Center Piece " 120 year old Music Box"

"Decorative Parquetry, Dinning Table"

"Lion Carvings, Our Company's Mascot"

"Gothic Cat Carving"

"Stylish Box"

"COMPANY CREST"

Boxes, With & Without Carving & Marquetry

Cameo, Jewelry Box

"Marquetry, Christmas Gifts"

"Santa Claus" Cookies and Milk Cabinet

"Carved Frame" & "Marquetry Picture"

Company Name: Zongkers Custom Woods Inc

Contact Name: DennisLee

Location: Omaha, NE 68108

Year Founded: 1989

Sq. Footage: 10,000

Employees: 9

Gross Sales: 1,000,000

Website: www.zongkers.com

Product Specialties:

Architectural Millwork - Lathe Turning
Cabinets - Cabinet Designers
Cabinets - Custom Cabinets
Carving - Architectural Ornamentation
Carving - General
Furniture - Custom Furniture
Furniture - Furniture Designers
Veneer and Marquetry - General
Woodworking - General

Shop Equipment:

Viewer Comments:

Posted By: Arianna [08/11]
Nice shop Dennis....

Posted By: Dennis Lilienthal [08/15]
Hi Dennis:
your work looks awesome that carving is cool,how many people in your shop can do that . looks labor intensive ,nice looking shop. good to see such a high level of work in Ne.best of good fortune in the future !!

Posted By: BobS [08/16]
Dennis,
What is the machine/press object in the carving and marqutery photo to the right of the scroll saw underneath the chisels? Look like some sort of mechanical press.
Thanks
Bob

Posted By: Dennis Zongker [08/19]
Hi Bob, It's a old picture laminator. I use it after hot shading marquetry. It heats up, then I can flatten the veneer.

Posted By: Dennis Zongker [08/19]
Hi Dennis, Thank you for the complement. I'm the only one at my company that does carving.

Posted By: Boisy [10/23]
Real nice work Dennis. Nice to see some good old fashioned works. However, I would invest in a better dust collection system. You have a ton of saw dust everywhere and breathing all that for twenty years is going to kill you. Outside of that great work!

Posted By: Arianna [10/24]
Dennis this is a great article. When I read this I could see the passion you have in woodworking and the respect you have for those that work for you and not to mention being able to work side-by-side with your brother.

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Company Description Continued

In a mass-produced world, the Zongkers brothers stand out: they're dedicated to custom craftsmanship. A prime example is Dennis Zongkers' hand-carved chess set: not just the chess pieces, but the chessboard, table, and two chairs are hand-made from light and dark wood. An avid chess-player himself ("I'm a chess fanatic," he says), Dennis built the first chess table for fun. "It was like Alice in Wonderland," he says — "I just wanted to go overboard." But since then, he's built two more sets like it for paying customers — at $42,000 a pop.

The brothers do a good business in more conventional furniture pieces — for example, they sell a lot of conference tables to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) — but given a chance, Dennis Zongkers will gladly spend hours on a task like carving griffins for the legs of a triangular table. "I love adding the marquetry and carving to furniture," he says — "not making it too gaudy, but trying to make it as clean as possible." The triangle table also required him to invent some new joinery, he says: "I developed a couple of triangle joints that I do on the table saw. That's as much fun as the carving."

Built using skills honed on custom furniture, the Zongkers brothers' cabinetry also tends to be out of the ordinary. And the custom mindset of a furniture builder runs through their cabinet production process as well. Everything is wood — no particleboard — and everything is made in house, including doors and drawers. And asking Dennis Zongkers about the joinery he prefers for cabinet construction is like asking a jazz pianist whether he'd rather play sharps or flats. "Hmm …," he says. "We usually just use rabbets and dadoes … sometimes we use pocket screws … it just depends. We have a chisel mortiser, so we do a lot of mortises and tenons too." Ask him about a particular curved door on a cabinet shown on his website, and he says, "Usually on our veneered radius doors, we use bending plywood, and glue it up on a form with yellow glue in the vacuum press. Then we clean it up, and then put it back in the bag and veneer it. But that one might be solid, I don't remember. If they're solid, we just cut the angles to get the radius and then we sand it smooth."

"Rarely do we build the same piece twice," says Zongker. That makes sales and marketing a special challenge. Since starting their business in 1989, the Zongkers brothers have kept the same division of labor: "Dan does the sales and designing and deals with the customers up front, and then it comes to me and I make the shop drawings in AutoCAD and make sure it all works." The brothers work well together, says Dennis, because they're so different. "We've been a team, working together, since 1981, really. He's 48 now and I'm 46. And we get along really well because we are totally opposite. I like to play basketball for fun, he likes to go fishing – you know?"

Besides the CAD work and his carving, Dennis also handles supervision on the shop floor. That's less work now than it used to be, he says: "It has taken us a long time to get the right guys. We have some really good guys now — great attitudes. And they're so talented now that I don't have to spend much time watching over them — I can tell them what I want done in the very beginning, go over it with them real quick, and answer a few questions here and there, and that's about it."

With such a strong custom focus, there's no real place in his shop for something like a CNC router, says Zongker. But power equipment, of course, plays a vital role. "We couldn't get along without our basic machinery — the panel saw and the planers and the table saws and all that. I love our Pulsar panel saw — we've had that for 12 years now." Zongkers' favorite piece of iron is an automated dovetail machine used to make all the company's drawers. "When we first started, when it was just me and my brother, we used to do them all by hand," he says. "Then we bought an OmniJig, but it just wasn't fast enough. So then we went to the Olmec automated dovetail machine — I think it cost about $16,000. That's another machine that we couldn't live without. It's nice to put your parts in there and that thing just smoothly cuts 'em out like butter, you know — and it's a perfect fit every time."

These days, Zongker spends more time at his computer drafting workstation than he does on the shop floor. But he still likes to make sawdust. "I'm on a real nice dining room table right now with decorative parquetry, and yeah, I go out and do my own cutting — cut my radiuses out and all that. I love going out there and running the table saw or the jointer." And like his crew, Zongker likes the fact that every day brings something different. "My guys will say, 'I'm so glad I don't work in a shop where it's the same thing all the time.' It's a joy to do something different every day or every week — it really is. Just making drawers or whatever every day all day long, all the time … that would be like prison for any of us here." When people see him working on an exacting carving or piece of parquetry, says Zongker, "They say, 'Wow, you have a lot of patience.' But when you love something and you're being really creative, you'd be surprised how easy it really is."

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The editors, writers, and staff at WOODWEB try to promote safe practices. What is safe for one woodworker under certain conditions may not be safe for others in different circumstances. Readers should undertake the use of materials and methods discussed at WOODWEB after considerate evaluation, and at their own risk.

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