How the CZU Fire Impacted Kochlacs Wood

Joey is a Bay Area native who started his own furniture building business right here in Santa Cruz. To help support the relief of California State Parks destroyed by the CZU Fire Complex, Joey was kind enough to donate a custom-built coffee table to us in order to help raise funds.

Just before the Out of the Ashes campaign went live, Joey gave us a call to let us know that the coffee table he built for the Out of the Ashes fundraiser was finished. Naturally, we dropped everything we were doing and ran over to his shop to check it out. While admiring the work, we got chatting about everything from how the grain in the wood can change the shimmer on a table to his day-by-day breakdown of the CZU Fire Complex.

Q: Tell us a little bit about who you are, where you’re from, and what brought you to Santa Cruz.

Joey: I am from Moraga and Berkeley, and grew up in the East Bay. My family originally came to Santa Cruz in the 1860s, and so we have a lot of history here. My great uncle, William T Jeter, was the mayor of Santa Cruz back in the day! We have an old photo that’s him with Henry Cowell and John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt. That picture was taken at what used to be my family’s house on Beach Hill by the Boardwalk. The other side of my family bought a large property up in Boulder Creek back in 1935.

I found my way to Santa Cruz after college, and went to work at Fleet Feet in Aptos for a little bit. That wasn’t my thing, and I pretty quickly bought a cheap bandsaw mill and started milling dead trees on our Boulder Creek property in my spare time. That’s where I learned how to mill, and then shortly thereafter I did a fine woodworking apprenticeship with Ron Day.

In college, I studied physical geography and GIS (geographic information systems). It’s proved helpful as a sawyer… I actually started out doing some soil mapping of our Boulder Creek property because I wanted to do some farming out there. Turned out that farming on that land was totally unfeasible, and so I turned to milling instead.

Q: Did you have a chance to do any fire prep on the Boulder Creek property last year?

J: No. Not other than cutting down dead trees, which is something I’ve been doing for the past eight years out there.

Q: When was Kochlacs Wood created, and how did you find your niche as a high-end custom furniture maker?

J: So, I made my first pieces in early 2014, and then a year later, in early 2015, I really “became something” [laughs]. Yeah, 2014 was sort of just a year of general floundering [more laughter]. By 2015, I had made several pieces and built my website.

One thing a little bit unique about my process is that I get all of my wood from local tree services. Companies bring me logs from their tree work and I process them in my sawmill space here in Santa Cruz, then turn them into furniture.

Q: Did you have one big breakthrough project?

J: Yes. I sold a bunch of dead Redwood lumber from our Boulder Creek property to Assembly, the old restaurant downtown. They made all their dining tables out of that wood, but sadly they’re no longer in business. It was interesting wood because it had died while standing, which left really unique black marks in the wood.

Q: Okay, moving on to August of last year. What was your experience with the CZU Fire? Where were you when you heard about the fire?

J: Before I dive in, I want to share some background. That spring and summer before the fire was when my friends and I started doing lots of Big Basin loops on our bikes. We’d climb up Empire Grade and pop out on Highway 1. I was just starting to get familiar with Big Basin, and then the fire happened. I remember when the lightning happened, I just thought “Oh, sh*t, this is going to start a bunch of fires.”

Q: So you knew right away?

J: Oh, yeah. For one, being a property owner in the forest you really think about these things, and then also my background in physical geography had taught me things like climatology and pyrogeography. So all of these things I had learned just taught me that when lightning hits the ground, it’ll start fires if it’s dry.

As soon as the fire broke out, I rushed up to Boulder Creek and grabbed all of my chainsaws, and just immediately started sharpening everything. Some friends came over to help me get my chainsaws prepared just in case things really went sideways.

Then for maybe four days, it seemed like, oh, well maybe this isn’t going to be that bad. I just remember thinking that “Wow, nothing has gotten out of control. This is actually going better than expected.” And then it got really hot, the winds picked up, and things got completely out of hand.

There were two nights where I remember the fire moved at least ten miles per night. That was really terrifying because it was headed toward UCSC and the Westside.

Q: Was your property in Boulder Creek okay?

J: Oh, yeah. Nothing major there. The fire got about 4 miles away from that property. If the wind had been going that way instead of south, though, it would have taken out the Boulder Creek area instead of Bonny Doon. Initially, the fire was moving inland but then the winds picked up and pulled it south. After the fire, lots of friends came up to make sure we had a defensible space up there for future fire seasons.

Q: How did the fire impact your supply chain?

J: So, eventually, the wood from the fires will become furniture. We just finished milling a bunch of Bay and Madrone logs that I got from tree services around the time of the fire, and they’re not going to be ready to use for two to three years. You have to give hardwoods about one year of drying time per inch of thickness before they’re ready to use. First, we air dy all our wood and then kiln dry the slabs for a month to top ‘em off. Eventually, wood from the fires will make its way over to my workshop.

Q: Let’s talk a little bit about the table and the giveaway. Why did you decide to be a part of Out of the Ashes?

J: Well, I am personally going to be using those parks. I also just think it’s a really great thing to do and I want to continue my sponsorship of SCMTS.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about the table? Sounds like there’s a story around it…

J: Yeah, so a tree service called me up one day and told me they were removing a tree from a backyard near Downtown Santa Cruz because it was uplifting a foundation of a house. I went out and they were craning the sections of the tree over an apartment building and into their dump trucks and my trailer. I milled the wood in Boulder Creek, and it’s taken about seven years for it to dry. Walnut takes a long time to dry properly, and can be an odd wood to work with. Sometimes Walnut gets a type of bacteria in the wood cells that actually blocks the pathway for the cells to lose moisture.

When designing the table, I really let the wood guide me. The length was perfect for a coffee table, and it has a reverse-matched top so it’s cohesive but still natural. The legs are a miter wrap. The classic term for the table is a “waterfall” table because the grain carries throughout the legs and top. It’s almost got an iridescent look to it because of how the grain is oriented. If you cut through the grain in a certain way, a little bit of light is reflected back at you.

Q: Why is it important to support trail stewardship?

J: Because you have to give back to the things you enjoy. My friends and I use local trails all the time. We ride on them, run on them, and spend tons of time outside here in Santa Cruz.