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When houses cost in the millions of
dollars, a central interior focus is often the staircase that
frequently sets the tone for the exclusivity of the residence. With
this in mind, custom staircases for these homes can easily cost
thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
To build these exclusive staircases with precision and beauty has
always been the challenge for Rock Woodworks (Lake Worth, FL). But
with the help of CAM software and new wood cutting equipment,
President Roger Rock is able to deliver staircases with style and
beauty along with precision fit.
Starting out as a general building
contractor about 25 years ago in the northern Palm Beach County,
Florida area, Rock was somewhat forced into building staircases when
his customers couldn’t find anyone to do it. Though he was reluctant
to build them, he gave his customer a price with a generous profit
built in, and they accepted it. “Then people just kept coming and
asking me to build stairs for them, so I figured I’d do it for a
living,” he says.
Currently, the company builds stair casements, railing systems,
circular and spiral staircases using wood or metal in traditional or
contemporary styles along with ornamental wrought iron, brass, and
stainless-steel, custom wood railings, hand-scrolled balusters and
custom entry doors all of which are usually done in-house.
Rock says that he targets high-end
houses, because they aren’t as affected by economy swings as lower
priced ones. What’s more, in the Palm Beach County area there seems
to be no end of expensive houses where multi-million dollar canal
homes sit alongside moored seven figure yachts.
Rock runs his company in a 10,000 sq. ft. building and has 14
employees. He also uses two Techno CNC routers that have made all
the difference in his being able to produce precision wood
components with fast turnaround that also fit together like a glove
on a hand. But to get this precision and short lead times, he also
uses Mastercam CAD/CAM software (CNC Software, Inc., Tolland, CT) to
design his wood components and interface with his CNC router.
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Rock says, “I got on the internet and
started looking into CNC routers and was attracted to Techno because
of the price. Never having been involved with CNC routers before, it
was a little scary, but I went ahead with them. When it came time
for software, I was told by the distributor that Mastercam is better
software, worth its price, and it would be money well spent. So I
took him at his word, and it’s been great.”
Rock found that at a price of roughly
$35,000 each, few staircase makers could afford a CNC router, let
alone two routers, giving him a competitive advantage for building
custom staircases in his area. Each router has a 4’ x 8’ table, and
3 HP motor along with a tool changer for up to nine tools. They use
servo motors with ball-screw drives for precision cutting. “I’ve had
them almost a year now, and if we didn’t have them, we would close
our doors. I would quit,” he adds.
“We do a lot of components with the routers and Mastercam such as
stair treads, railings, and newel posts. It just kind of goes on and
on,” Rock mentions.
As to what he likes about Mastercam, he
says, “The on-screen photos help illustrate the program, and it
speeds up the learning curve. The fact that you can type in
fractions if you don’t happen to know the decimal equivalent and it
automatically converts a fraction to a decimal are things that come
to mind that I like about it."
“We use it a lot for layout and renderings. Whatever we draw in
AutoCAD, we simply send it out to Mastercam and then to the router.
We put in a point bit in the router’s spindle and scratch out a
stairway system (in wood???) for a customer. We do a full-scale
rendering of the whole rail system this way. |
Then we can take it to the job site,
stand it up and it goes together precisely. This allows the
customer, who is spending maybe $50,000 to $70,000 on a railing
system, to see what it looks like in the house. There isn’t a week
that goes by that we don’t think of another thing for Mastercam to
do.”
Rock’s average stair and railing contract runs around $70,000 per
house for a single system. But there have been other projects that
easily escalated this figure, such as one job he did that had
$800,000 worth of stairs and railings in a 37,000 sq. ft. house.
Rock and four of his employees are
trained on Mastercam. As to its simplicity he says that when they
first purchased it, “We just got on the program and started working
with it. However, I’m sure we’re only scratching the surface
of what the program can do.
But anytime we need it to do something,
we either figure it out or call our sales rep, and he really knows
the program. He doesn’t even have to do any research; he just knows
off the top of his head what it will do.”
With his CNC router and Mastercam, Rock will be starting a new niche
for his business by building circular stair kits and marketing them
across the country. “We’re building these kits and putting them
together, and they work perfectly. They’re very easy to build, and
just about anybody can put them together. Normally what somebody
might have to pay $10,000 for a staircase, we’re able to get it to
their doorway and with their labor to install it they can have one
for $5,000. We’re selling them around our area to homeowners and
builders, because that’s primarily who we deal with. The money they
save on the stairs, they’re putting into custom top railings. That’s
where the eye appeal is.”
Rock Woodworks is growing, and with the
help of CNC routers and Mastercam, they are stepping up to new
opportunities.
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