Delbert Kauffman came to Southern Oregon 30 years ago "a 1968 flower child," and now his Kauffman Wood Products employs 11 people making toys and furniture out of hand-peeled Douglas fir poles. Wood products business began with burned-out dropout By Bill Varble On the wall of Delbert Kauffman's factory in tiny Kerby in the Illinois Valley is a photo of a 70-foot pine that has fallen smack on top of a kennel built of Kauffman's wood poles. A note from the building's owner says the strength of the post-and-pole construction saved the lives of the seven dogs inside when the tree did its thing. Kauffman swears it's an unsolicited testimonial. Like the stout structure, Delbert Kauffman has had a knack of being in the right place at the right time. When he showed up in rural Josephine County 30 years ago as a refugee from Southern California, he was broke and burned out. Today, Kauffman Wood Products employs 11 workers manufacturing indoor and outdoor wooden furniture and other pole products sold all over the world. The company grosses in the mid-six figures annually. "I came here as a flower child in 1968," says Kauffman, a rotund, bearded 63-year-old with a twinkle in his eyes. "I'd gone broke in the nightclub business, gone down in flames, and my wife and I had just had our third child." As chainsaws and lathes and sanders whir and whine in the shop -- it's the site of the old Cabax Mill, once one of the largest in the county -- Kauffman is explaining to a customer on the phone in his office that his custom order will be a while yet. "I've been doing a lot of apologizing lately," he says, hanging up. "We've been so busy. We're a month behind." Kauffman's furniture is made from hand-peeled Douglas fir thinned from second-growth forests. The stuff is built in traditional mortise-and-tenon style, by hand, and the finished pieces retain the character of small trees. Prices reflect the hand-made process, with pole beds going for $400 to $2,000. The furniture can be seen at the Applegate Lodge, the Southern Oregon Historical Society's store in the Rogue Valley Mall and Classic Living in Medford. Kauffman was cutting firewood and building fences back in those flower child days when he acquired a team of draft horses and began doing horse logging. That led to building a log cabin for his family. Locals dubbed it "the Ponderosa." When he built a pole barn -- he visited old barns in the area to copy the old-timers' techniques -- he found there was a lot of interest. When he made the occasional bed, swings or couch, people told him the things would sell, and a business was born. For a look at the company today, see its Web site: www.kauffmanwood.com The son of an Iowa farmer, Kauffman got out of the U.S. Marine Corps in the late 1950s and earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Long Beach State College in 1962. But he soon wound up as an owner of the Golden Bear, a locally famed night spot in Huntington Beach, Calif. "A friend with confidence born of ignorance said, `Let's open a folk club.' We did, with $2,000," he says. The club opened in 1963, as the wave of acoustic folk music that had started in the '50s was ebbing and a new generation of young singers was gathering in the wings. Among early performers at the Bear were Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Mason Williams, Buffy Saint Marie, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Steve Martin and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Being something of a raconteur, Kauffman was once talked into performing as a standup comic by some friends. His break came when owner Doug Weston gave him a shot at the not-yet-famous Troubador in Los Angeles. By the time Kauffman took the stage it was late and the house was practically empty, and his friends began harassing him from the floor of the club. "They heckled me!" he remembers. The evening ended with one friend telling Weston he had to be a sadist to let somebody "as bad as Delbert Kauffman" make a fool of himself. So much for a career in comedy. A special party at the Takelma Dome School last summer reunited some of the entertainers who used to perform at the Golden Bear. But these days Kauffman is usually concerned not with special parties but special orders, often building furniture to the customer's wishes. "Logs are irregular," he says. "You pretty much have to do things one at a time." Unlike some sawmill owners, Kauffman isn't facing a timber crunch. He uses poles five inches in diameter and less, down to an inch. "We use logs that aren't marketable," he says. "Any plot that needs to be thinned, we can use." Such wood is often burned as slash. The irony of operating a successful secondary wood products company on the site of a defunct mill designed for big trees isn't lost on Kauffman. "I'd like to see Southern Oregon become a log furniture center," he says. "That would change the forests around here. If we create a market, that creates jobs, and small timber owners are going to look at their plots differently. "What we're seeing now is not management, it's harvest. If we don't change, it's going to look like Roseburg around here. Or a sheep pasture." Call arts and entertainment reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478. |
