An Afternoon With Clay Cua

This business owner and woodworker works with big slabs to make amazing projects

Many of us had the opportunity to take woodshop while in high school, and for some of us, that woke up a passion and a skill that stayed for years to come.

That is exactly what happened with Clay, and now he runs a custom woodworking business with yearlong (or longer) project backlogs.

Clay started Oakmond design by sourcing his wood and slabs from a local mill. While this worked for a couple years, things got a bit expensive after Covid 19. To keep things affordable for his customers and for himself, Clay took the advice of his old shop teacher and decided to get himself a mill. Luckily for Clay, someone else in his community had a Woodland Mills HM130MAX that Clay just so happened to get a chance to try out, and he immediately decided he would get the same mill. 

In smart business practice, and as taught by his grandfather, Clay did everything he could think of to help his business strive and survive. Clay went around knocking on doors, creating advertisements, and to stay relevant with modern day, he started up an Instagram channel dedicated to Oakmond Design. The channel started small with Clay posting photos of projects and videos of him working on the projects, and soon his channel grew and grew until he became a well-known account in the custom woodworking field. Now, with the addition of his HM130MAX, Clay has become a well-known face in the milling community as well.

Now that Clay had the mill, he needed to get the logs, and eventually he would need to figure out a way to dry his boards.

Clay knew people within his community who worked as arborists, so he started off getting logs from them, which allowed him to start his board collection. As Clay grew, and more and more people started to learn who he was, people started reaching out to him offering logs from their property for him to come take.

This turned into Clays dream, where he would get a log from someone off their property, and then have the opportunity to use the boards from that log and turn them into custom furniture for the people that it came from. This created a deeper connection between the final piece and the customer, which is something that Clay dreamed of from day one. 

Now, with all those logs, comes lots of drying and lots of board stacks. Clay knew he needed something on a large scale to help him dry the boards safely and properly. What he came up with was using an old, refrigerated trailer as a custom kiln. It’s a genius setup and can dry his logs to the proper humidity within a month or two – way faster than his original outdoor setup.

After all is said and done, the logs are dried and ready to be made into custom furniture. For some customers, they come and choose the logs from Clays dry pile, and for others who provided the logs to Clay, its just a matter of waiting for the project designs (which Clay also does himself.) Each finished piece is unique and every one of them has its own story to be told. It’s a truly magnificent process to see and we are grateful for the opportunity to get up close and see it in person.

Make sure you give both Part One and Part Two of our visit with Clay a watch to see how the magic happens!

Thank you again for the visit, Clay!