Wood Plant Tour - Sr. y Sra. Ese

As many of you know, I love the wood products manufacturing business. My first job was at a small wood products manufacturing shop that makes wood products for the housing industry. My second job is at a wood products furniture manufacturing shop. So, you can guess that when my professor said that we were going to a jewelry and souvenir wood manufacturing shop in Costa Rica, I was ecstatic!

Sr. y Sra. Ese is a very famous wood jewelry and souvenir shop in Costa Rica that makes most of their souvenirs that are out of wood as well as exports many of their products as well. They also give bilingual tours. So, my class went with the Basic 2 class and had to interview an employee as part of the field trip assignment (it was a speech class taught in Spanish, so it worked as a perfect part of the hands-on curriculum).

Their process began with obtaining Costa Rican wood from around the country and drying it: 10 years outside and 5 years inside. Then, we saw their shop which had a lot of woodworking machines similar to the ones I've used or seen: Joiners, Sanders, large and small bandsaws, and a number of different lathes. That was just in the shop. There were 6 small band saws further in, along with an entire room filled with tumblers and an laser engraver.

 

A sampling of their drying wood - separated by specie and date 

Drying trunks for table tops 

 Bunny that stole the show - So Cute!

 

Basically, the process was: cut the wood into large blocks, dry them, cut them into tiny pieces to be used for jewelry, sort them by size to ensure that they were cut to a quality size, drill (teeny tiny) holes in each piece, send them into the tumblers, assemble. The tumblers had different resins and sand papers to polish the wood as well as different angles to alter the finished sizes and shapes. The pieces of wood would spend 5 hours in the tumblers, one hour per tumbler.

Tumbler - Imagine the noise these things make!

Each part of the process was performed by hand; no CNC equipment (automatic assembly-line type equipment) was used in this shop. The only thing that has changed in their process machine-wise since the inception of Sr. y Sra. Ese was the addition of their laser engraver. I could spend hours talking about this amazing experience, but there's too much information to put into one blog!

 



These are the smallest parts that they are drilling holes in.

 

And here's a few of the different shapes they make.

 

They made a variety of jewelry including bracelets, necklaces, and earrings. They also made pens, bowls, large carvings, mugs, model cars, key chains, saucers, and owl hanging decorations just to name a few. All of their products were amazing, colorful, and perfect works of art and examples of just how fabulous wood is as a material.

How beautiful! Sadly, this was not for sale.

But this was!

And these too!

But this wasn't. Although they had some just carvings in the store, this one just fascinated me.

 Here is just a sampling of the Costa Rican wood that they use. Yes, these colors are 100% natural.

My interview went very well and without many issues. I interviewed the guide on the manufacturing process, many of the questions he had answered in the tour so I simply reviewed those answers with him to be sure that I remembered them correctly. The rest, I asked like it was a regular interview, such as "what in your opinion is the hardest product that you make here?" It was nice knowing that I could understand him; I could see my Spanish improving!

Sadly, I had to leave this amazing manufacturing facility behind, but all the Spanish and Manufacturing that I learned (as well as souvenirs that I bought) would remain with me. On to my last week of this Speech course and my upcoming trips!