Eddie Conyers engineered his own equipment to drill stile holes that are the exact distance apart and centered inside.

There is no such thing as a shutter-making machine. At least that’s what Eddie Conyers of Conyers, Inc. in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, found out when he went to purchase machinery to help him get started in the interior shutter business. He had to use his own improvisational skills and a lot of trial and error to come up with the equipment he now uses to build his custom-made, plantation-style interior shutters.

With the ever-increasing popularity of interior plantation shutters and plenty of advice from his brother-in-law, Thomas Jernigan, on marketing and how to figure costs, Conyers now does $500,000 a year of business and is expecting a 15 to 20 percent increase this year. The switch from a cabinet door business to an interior shutter business came about in 1996 after he visited a friend who had just had plantation shutters installed in his house.

“When I looked at those shutters, I thought they were something I could do,” he says. “Plus, most people who buy shutters already have nice homes and have money. That wasn’t the case with my cabinet door business. I had $30,000 in receivables at all times. Now, I basically have none.”

Conyers took a shutter apart, and along with his foreman, John McCray, set about figuring out how to produce one. “I spent a great deal of time just trying to design the air gun that shoots the staples into the tilt rod,” says Conyers. “I took a DualFast staple gun and attached a jig to hold it down. The gun has a spring on it, so that when you pull the trigger, it shoots the staple in at a certain exact depth. It was the biggest deal just to get those staples in there correctly.”

The next machine engineered was one for drilling the holes into the stiles that connect with the louver pins. Conyers explains, “It’s nothing more than a motor with a welded-on Jacobs chuck and drill bit. It rides on a band cylinder. An H-block holds the stile in place. When you hit the switch, the air cylinder applies air to it to hold the stile exactly where it should be, and the holes are drilled down its length. On the drill settings, a bar is color coded for 2” intervals and 3” intervals. We are dealing with the width of a pencil line. If you don’t have those holes drilled exactly the same distance apart and centered inside, the shutters don’t work. Louvers require precise woodworking.”

Software is developed to make spec sheets
Conyers used his past experience as a computer programmer to design his own software to put out work specification sheets for his five employees. “My computer experience allows me to do the work of three sales people because all I need to measure are the outside dimensions of the windows,” explains Conyers. “I have a voice recorder in my tape measure, so I can create a voice file of the measurements of each job.

“Then I key the measurements in. My software program tells me how many stiles, rails, louver blades, lift-bars and cross-bars to make and their lengths. Everything is calculated. The program produces a work sheet with specifications for each shutter component, and those specs are given to the employee in charge of that component. Each employee knows how to do one thing — there is a louver man, a stile man, etc.”

Pre-milled, 21/2” and 31/2” louver blade material is used, which is sanded on both sides at the same time by an inverted Porter/Cable sander that McCray mounted on a motor. A Newton boring machine bores the holes for the louver pins. The pins are ordered 20,000 at a time, and they are inserted by hand. Dowels also are inserted by hand. The shutters are completely made to the exact width, but always three inches longer than they will end up. Then, they are cut down to size on a SCMI sliding table saw (Model S12) to meet specifications for length.

Conyers says he makes his shutters out of fingerjointed poplar because poplar has a tight grain and fingerjointed material doesn’t bow. If the shutters are to be stained, basswood is used. The shutters are assembled by hand at a rate of 12 per hour.

Conyers finishes the shutters in his 5,000-sq.-ft. shop. Two coats of primer and two coats of finish are applied. Customers pay $18.50 a square foot — finished and installed.

The biggest challenge in making shutters is precision, believes Conyers. “I tell employees this is not a cabinet shop. Slow down and take your time. Everything must be exact, or the shutters will not work properly.”

Do Big Customers Downplay Small Shops’ Creativity?
One of the primary challenges facing the small- to medium-sized shop, believes Michael Crowley, owner of Eatonton, Georgia’s Rock Eagle Store Fixtures, is one he just experienced with a major national retailer.

“A major retailer approached us about purchasing some of our patented GT Store Fixture Systems. I thought I had hit the big time until I was asked if we were EDI (electronic data invoicing) compliant. When I said no, they said they only work with vendors that have EDI.”

Crowley searched the Internet and found a company he can use to communicate with them in order to avoid buying a $10,000 software program. However, he still believes small shops are at a disadvantage when it comes to working with big customers. “This experience has made me realize there are potential customers out there that we have sent brochures to who probably have found out that we are not a big company and, therefore, have not considered us,” he says. “The small shop is not getting the same fair shake as bigger companies. I think the big customers are hurting themselves, however. It’s not always going to be the big manufacturer that comes up with the bright idea. The big customers are operating with blinders on if they think that.”