George’s Furniture Factor Tour

George’s Furniture Factory is in Marietta, Pennsylvania.  Their web site indicates that tours are offered.  There is a $3 charge and reservations are required.

George Martin founded the company in 1970.  They specialize in handcrafted, solid hardwood furniture.  The original building burned down and the company has been at the present location since 1975.  George retired in 2008 and turned the business over to his daughter, Juanita, and her husband, Chris.

We entered the show room, paid our $6 to Chris and the tour started. 

Even though the furniture is absolutely beautiful to look at, we’re not shopping for furniture.  This part of the tour was interesting but not exactly what we had expected.

This table was very interesting.  It is a 6 leg extension table that when closed holds 4-6 people.  When open holds 22-24 people.

A leaf storage cabinet is built to hold the number of leafs requested by the purchaser.

Chris explained the different woods that are used.  Red Oak, Cherry, Maple, and Black Walnut.

The natural black walnut blend is natural walnut using both the dark inner wood with the lighter outer wood section revealing a beautiful color combination. The center part of the tree (heartwood) is dark brown in color, while the ten outer layers of sapwood are a light off-white color.  

This table shows both the dark inner wood with the

 lighter outer wood.  This was my favorite piece.

After looking at the finished furniture we headed to the workshop.

The rough-sawn lumber is slow dried in their own kiln to reduce stress cracks that can occur in the grain if dried too quickly.  Moisture in the wood can over time lead to loose joints, splits, and warping.  Some of the lumber is air dried.  Some lumber will dry for several years before it is ready to be made into furniture! 

When a piece of furniture has been ordered one craftsman is chosen to handcraft the item from start to finish.  The boards are processed through jointers, planers and table saws.

These machines are big!

Very large sander.

The craftsman cuts, turns, and sands the pieces to exact specifications.

Templets

Chris explained the process of making a dining room chair.

 Chair seat.

Forming the seat.

 Chair back.

Chair legs.

 Even with every machine hooked up to vacuums, there was still plenty of saw dust around.

The assembled piece of furniture is taken to the staining station where the craftsman hand rubs the color-specified stain into the wood. After the stain has thoroughly dried, the furniture is taken into the dust-filtering spray booth where two coats of a premium-quality clear, water-resistant finish are applied to the top, bottom, outside, and inside to seal the piece and protect it from moisture.

Stained and drying

Spray room

The first coat of finish is dried and sanded.

Sanding the first coat.

The craftsman who makes the furniture will sign and date every piece.

This was an interesting tour.  It would have been fun to see some of the machinery being used.  When we were there only four craftsmen were working.

They do have smaller items such as coasters and jewelry boxes.  We didn’t buy anything.  I think the "tour" is more for people that are interested in ordering a piece of furniture.

Utz Chips (The Chip Trip)

I was happy to see that Utz offers a tour of their factory in Hanover, PA.  The tour is free, it’s self guided and there are no reservations required.  I can’t remember if we have this brand in Texas but we have been seeing it a lot in our travels north.

The factory opened at 9:30 and since both of us were taught that “if you’re on time, you are late”, we had to wait about 20 minutes for the doors to open.  But that turned out to be a good thing because we were able to see the trucks bringing in the potatoes for today’s production.

The doors opened promptly at 9:30 and I was disappointed to see a sign that said no cameras or video without permission. 

There was a very nice (talkative) woman that was trying to get the introductory video going.  She was never able to get it working so we moved along hoping it would be working by the time we finished the tour.  There was probably a lot of good information on the video but we never did get to see it.

The showroom floor had some interesting displays.  This is the “famous gold can.”

Apparently you would buy the can full of potato chips then return it for the factory to re-use.

The founders were Bill and Salie Utz.  In 1921 they began producing Hanover Home Brand Potato Chips in Hanover, PA, in their kitchen, cooking about 50 pounds of chips an hour.  They sold their fresh chips to small local grocers and markets.  In 1947 the name was changed to the Utz Potato Chip Company.

Today Utz is the largest independent, privately held snack brand in the US.  They produce over 3 million pounds of snacks per week (about half of which are potato chips).

We were ready to start our tour (The Chip Trip) and again came to a sign that said “no cameras or video without permission.”  So, I asked for permission.  I was told “Sure.  Take all the pictures you want.”  I’m glad I asked!

This facility is 600,000 square feet.  It was 50,000 square feet when it opened in 1975.  In 1982 it was expanded to 300,000.  In 1985 it was expanded again.  In 1987 the Tour Gallery was opened.  In 1997 the World Distribution Center was built at this same location.  There are many other plants around the country.

There are plenty of windows in the observation gallery that looked down on the production process.  There was a push-to-talk audio program that was supposed to guide us through every step.

I say “supposed to” because a few of the buttons didn’t work.

The potatoes are taken from the delivery trucks and are washed before going through the peeler.

Washed potatoes ready for peeling.

It takes 40 pounds of potatoes to make one pound of chips.

After being peeled they go to the slicer. 

Freshly peeled potatoes.  

This machine started acting up and whole, peeled, potatoes started flying out of the machine!  You can see several of them on the floor.

From the slicer directly into the fryer.  They are fried for 2 1/2 minutes at 340 degrees.

Slicing machine on the right.

4,000 pounds of potatoes per hour are fried.

From the slicing machine directly into the fryer.

The chips are fried in cottonseed oil then salt is applied.

The middle bin is full of salt.

Dark chips are not over fried, they lack the sugar content.  They are pulled off the line.

Dark chips are pulled out.

Chips cool while heading to packaging.

Chips cooling while moving up to the next level.

About 60 employees work in production and they change jobs every 30 minutes.

The chips travel around to different packaging stations.

Conveyor belt full of chips.

This machine was still being programmed for a “new item”.

Every box was being inspected.  They must have been having problems because there were a lot of packages removed.

.

The potato peels are sold to pig farmers.  The raw potatoes that could not be used and the cooked potatoes that couldn’t be used (such as those packages rejected from the newly programmed machine) are sold to cattle farmers.

The tour ended at the warehouse with chips ready to be shipped out.

This is not a 24/7 operation.  Production ends by 4:00 pm and the workers start cleaning and disinfecting the machines.  The oil is cooled and checked for reuse.

I would highly recommend this tour.  Even with the video and some of the audio not working it didn’t distract from the fun of seeing the complete journey of a potato chip!

We did get a free sample after our tour.  Their motto is “If they were any fresher you’d have to pick you own."

There is an outlet store down the road a little ways.  So we headed over there.

 Outlet store in the 1947 plant.

1st modern day Utz plant built in 1949, 

expanded in 1953, 1956, and 1958.

We bought a few items.

I will say that I will never, ever be able to have the Butterfinger Covered Pretzels in my house again.  Yep - they are that good!

I didn't find a magnet to buy but if there was one - this factory tour is certainly magnet worthy!

Hershey's Chocolate World

We stopped at Hershey World in 2011 (see Blog post 2011, May, The Sweetest Place on Earth).

In 2011 we went on the Trolley ride and went through the Chocolate Tasting Experience.  We did not go through Create Your Own Candy Bar and I was disappointed to learn that that section was being remolded and we would not be able to create our own candy bar this time.

From what I could remember it looked like a lot of remolding had been done since 2011.

We had a lot of fun on the Chocolate Tour Ride last time so that is where we started our tour.

You get on the cars while they are still moving.  Getting on isn’t hard.  Getting out of them while they are moving is a little harder!

Hershey World is not the Hershey factory.  It is a simulation of  how chocolate is made.  

The ride starts out with a very cute talking cow.

Around the corner there are more cows that are singing.  They are singing a different song than they were in 2011 and there are twice as many of them.

Short video.  It's cute!

We went through the roasting simulation and it really did get a little warm.

It takes 270 cocoa beans to make 1 pound of chocolate.

The trip takes about 30 minutes and shows Kisses being made, candy bars being molded and wrapped, etc.

At the end of the tour we were given a tiny candy bar.

The tour ends in the gift shop.

I like the way they have large areas where they have all the same kinds of candy together.

Reese’s section

We know better than to buy any of these giant packages.

Kisses were hand wrapped until 1921.

There were flavors we have never seen before.

I’m not going to go into the life of Milton S. Hershey.  You can get that from my 2011 blog.  He was a very interesting man.

We bought a few things.

Good size for holding milk to dunk cookies in!

I bought a different magnet for this trip.

Mark found out that there is a disc golf course on the grounds of the Hershey Hotel.

The Hotel Hershey

On the way to the hotel we saw these fun street lights.  Kiss with wrapper on.

Kiss with wrapper off.

This is a 9-hole disc golf course.  There are some very long holes.

A few trees make the course interesting

If you haven’t been before I would recommend Hershey World.  If you have been, things have changed a little but not enough to make it as exciting as the first time.