About Eric Tougas, Woodworker, Kiln Operator & Craftsman in Monroe, CT
Tougas Timberworks is not a studio. It's not a production shop. It's one person, one kiln, one set of hands, and more than two decades of woodworking experience. If you're buying a piece from Eric Tougas, you're buying something he personally milled, dried, and built, beginning to end, no exceptions.
The Hobby That Became the Job
Eric grew up in a family of woodworkers, not professionals, but men who built things because they loved it. His grandfather had a detached garage shop and spent his retirement making wooden toys for kids. Trains, airplanes, small things done with care. He donated all of them. His father turned to woodturning and eventually spent seven years building a canoe, moving the half-finished hull from Massachusetts to Connecticut when the family relocated. Seven years. One project. Eric watched all of it.
He didn't get serious about woodworking himself until his mid-20s. He and his now-wife moved into their first house together, finally had garage space, and he pulled out the hand-me-down tools his dad had passed along. Nothing fancy, a contractor table saw, a miter saw, a drill press. He built a coffee table out of branches he dragged from the woods and hickory flooring scraps. It had visible hardware. It wasn't pretty. But he built it, and that was enough to keep going.
Shortly after that first project, he discovered chainsaw milling, specifically the Granberg mill, which made it affordable to turn raw logs into usable lumber without a full sawmill setup. He started with a 50cc chainsaw and milled three logs before realizing he needed something bigger. He bought a bigger saw. Then he started stockpiling slabs. Then he started selling some of them, because the stack never stopped growing.
For years, it was a hobby with a small side hustle attached. He was doing four or five builds a year for friends, family, and local customers. Then a failed project changed the calculus. He'd installed a piece of furniture, live edge, from air-dried material, and ants crawled out of it about a week later. The wood hadn't been kiln dried. Air drying doesn't eliminate what's living in the wood. He knew about kilns, had even thought about getting one, but the cost felt like too much for something he was doing on the side. After that project, he started looking for someone else to dry his material and couldn't find anyone nearby who offered the service.
Then his daughter was born. Something about that moment made the math look different. He'd been working in the same field for twenty years and at some point stopped enjoying it. He called Paul from iDry in January. The kiln was delivered in late February. He started an LLC. Tougas Timberworks was open for business.
Small on Purpose
Eric will tell you directly that he wants to stay small. Not because he's afraid to grow, but because he knows what small means for quality. When you work with Tougas Timberworks, you're not getting your project handed off to a shop hand. You're getting Eric, the same person who picked out the slab, ran it through the kiln, and built the piece from scratch.
That matters in live edge furniture, where every slab is different and decisions have to be made constantly. How do you fill a void? Where does the grain want to go? What finish will let this piece of wood do the talking? Those aren't checklist items. They require judgment. Eric has built enough pieces to have that judgment, and he brings it to every project.
He's also honest about what he doesn't do. He's tried flooring. It's a three-person job that doesn't work well as a one-man operation. He doesn't do cabinetry. He keeps his focus on the things he does best, tables, countertops, islands, mantels, and delivers them at a standard that actually holds up.
Why Kiln Drying Matters, and Why Eric Does It Himself
One of the things that sets Tougas Timberworks apart from most small woodworking operations is the kiln. Most craftsmen at Eric's scale either buy pre-dried lumber from a supplier or work with air-dried material and hope for the best. Eric invested in an iDry kiln and operates it himself out of his Monroe shop.
The reason is straightforward: air drying is not the same as kiln drying. The old rule of thumb, a year per inch of thickness, is better than nothing, but it doesn't get wood to true furniture-grade moisture content. In Connecticut's climate, which runs humid in the summer and dry in the winter, that gap is exactly what causes finished pieces to crack, warp, or move after they're installed. And air drying does nothing to address what might be living in the wood.
Kiln drying brings the wood to stable moisture content and eliminates biological threats. It's why Eric's finished pieces hold up, and why other woodworkers in Fairfield County bring him their timber when they need it done right.
The kiln service runs $0.15 per board foot per day. It's available to individual craftsmen, cabinetmakers, and anyone who's milling their own lumber and needs it dried professionally. These are often Eric's favorite clients, people who understand what they're asking for and don't need to be talked into why it matters.
Local Timber, Kiln Dried, Built to Last
Eric sources timber locally across Connecticut. The species he works with most frequently include black walnut, white oak, hard maple, cherry, and sycamore, though inventory rotates based on what's been milled and dried. He doesn't have a favorite species. He has a favorite challenge: figuring out what a particular piece of wood wants to become.
Live edge slabs are his specialty. The natural edge of a slab, the bark line, the curve of the original tree, is what makes live edge furniture genuinely one-of-a-kind. No two tables are the same. No two countertops, no two mantels. You're not choosing from a catalog. You're choosing a piece of wood and asking someone to make it useful.
Slab inventory is available for purchase at $12 per board foot for most hardwood species, with black walnut at $15. Everything is kiln dried. Nothing is sold wet and left for the buyer to figure out.
Based in Monroe. Serving Fairfield County and Beyond.
Tougas Timberworks is based in Monroe, CT, and serves clients across Fairfield County, including Westport, Norwalk, Ridgefield, Newtown, Trumbull, Shelton, and the surrounding towns. Delivery and installation is available throughout Connecticut, and Eric is open to projects beyond state lines when the scope makes it worthwhile.
Custom orders typically run a two-to-three week lead time, depending on the complexity and size of the project. The process is straightforward: you come to the shop, look at material, approve an estimate, and put 50% down. The other 50% is due at completion. Eric doesn't ask for the deposit until he's ready to start your project.
Monroe, Connecticut
Work With the Craftsman Who Does It All
If you want a live edge table you chose from the raw slab, or a countertop that no one else in Fairfield County will have, or timber dried by someone who actually knows what furniture-grade moisture content means, this is where you call. Eric answers his own phone. He writes his own estimates. He delivers his own work.