Flat Rock Furniture was founded in 1986 by Van McQueen on the banks of the Big Flat Rock River, near the town of Flat Rock in Shelby County, Indiana. Mr. McQueen was also the founder of Old Hickory Furniture, in 1982, which still operates in Shelbyville, Indiana. Flat Rock's manufacturing operations are located in Tyner, Kentucky, a small community in the East Kentucky mountains, the heart of Appalachia.

Flat Rock manufactures furniture from hickory roundwood. Round wood trees are the small diameter trees you see when looking into the forest. They are small diameter sapling trees that sprout and grow in the understory of mature hardwood forests. Roundwood trees are those with stems smaller than six inches. Hickory roundwood is Flat Rock's species of choice for constructing furniture; although, for some products it uses random hardwood saplings.

Why hickory? Besides being a valuable food source for squirrels, rabbits, fox, deer and bear, hickory trees are a valuable natural resource for humans. Hickory wood is very hard, stiff, dense and shock resistant. Some woods are harder and some are stronger, but the combination of strength, toughness, hardness and stiffness found in hickory wood is not found in any other commercial wood. Historically, it has been used in striking tool handles, baseball bats, wheel spokes, and drumsticks. It was even used extensively for construction of early air planes.

These characteristics of hickory wood, make it ideal for chair construction, the one furniture item which must bear the repeated and varied weight of people. Further, hickory poles are roundwood, which means it is used in its natural state as a pole, with no sawing - It simply won't break. Flat Rock chairs and other furniture is generational and heirloom quality the day it is purchased.

The Green story. Flat Rock maintains leases with plantation pine growers in Mississippi and private timber growers in Tennessee to harvest hickory sapling trees from these properties. For the commercial tree growers, small sapling trees are a nuisance. They represent a fire hazard and rob nutrients from the commercial trees forest owners are trying to cultivate; so Flat Rock holds a synergistic relationship with its landowners to help cultivate their commercial forests by removing hickory saplings.

After 8 to 15 years, hickory saplings reach a size suitable for Flat Rock's use. In the forest products world this is a rapidly renewable resource akin to none. Pine is suitable for pulp wood at 20 years and construction lumber at 30 years. Hardwoods reach commercial maturity at 30 to 50 years; so, as trees go, hickory saplings are renewable at three to four times the rate of other timber.

Finally, to Flat Rock's delight and the chagrin of forest owners, hickory trees coppice, which means they sprout back from the stump. In other words, there is no need to replant – hickory trees regenerate, usually with multiple stems sprouting from one stump. The harvest in ten years is multiple.

Vertical Integration. Flat Rock is a totally vertically integrated company. It directly manages all operations from harvesting hickory saplings through transporting and processing them into furniture at its facilities in Kentucky. The transport is no more than 200 miles and occurs without interruption, no sawmills or processing centers, no off-loading, no distribution centers or brokers, at great energy savings, another "Green" feature of Flat Rock's products. A hickory pole can be cut, hauled, processed and manufactured into finished product within 60 days, all within the direct control and supervision of Flat Rock.

Flat Rock air dries its hickory poles to 30% moisture before kiln drying them to the required moisture content for furniture manufacturing. The kiln drying process assures the poles will not shrink in the final product and eliminates any wood boring insects in the process.