tannenboing, the modern, spiral christmas tree

Julie Hand Sanding a Tannenboing

My dear, dear friend, Julie and I just spent 12 hours hand sanding eight tannenboings. That’s right, 12 hours! This, after I’ve already paid a company $120 for two hours of sanding for EACH tannenboing! This is why there will only ever be 100 of these modern Christmas trees – just too labor intensive (read expensive) to produce. Each tree really is a labor of love – or maybe just labor!

Here is the long story: each tannenboing is laser cut from a huge sheet of metal – that part only takes about eight minutes. But 25 lbs of aluminum is expensive and renting time on the laser is expensive. But the kicker is that the heat from the laser creates these really sharp edges and splinter-like burrs on every edge of the metal. And I can tell you from personal experience, there is a whole lot of edge on every tannenboing! So, after they come off the laser, the fabricator had his team use a palm sander to grind down the sharp edges and metal burrs, which also helps create the brushed finish (which I love – it gives the tannenboing a little sparkle). To get that last bit of sharpness off the edge, there is no way around it, the tannenboings must be hand sanded. Once that is done, they are silkscreened with the logo and sent to me.

In October, 2009, I received a shipment of 100 of these babies. But when I went through them, half of them still had edges that I deemed too sharp. I sent those back to the fabricator for more sanding. They came back in November, but some were still too sharp. Those were separated out and only those that passed the QA test were packaged up. Now, I’m faced with finishing up those final trees. So, while my daughter is at school, my dear friend and I turn up the tunes and spend some quality time with each tannenboing, making sure each spiral is smooth to the touch. Julie jokes about the amount of DNA and fingerprints we leave on each tannenboing. I guess that is just evidence of the human labor put into each of our aluminum trees.

So if you’ve ever wondered why tannenboings are so expensive, or why there will only be 100 of them, now you know. Oh, and that fact that it costs $100 to ship the big boxes! Ugh! It seemed like such a simple idea when I started! The good news is, the tannenboing owners that I’ve heard from really do seem to love their modern aluminum Christmas trees. It feels good knowing that at least 100 people will have this artistic, reusable Christmas tree for the next decade or two. I think this must be how an artist feels, sharing something very personal and special with just a few people. It feels special to me anyway.