Capers Landrum Cauthen finds old wood that’s headed for the landfill and gives it new life as furniture that’s overflowing with character. [quote]“I started grabbing the wood from job sites or the pieces of wood that were piled at the end of the road on Sunday afternoons. Sometimes I would find a 200-year-old piece of wood,” he says. “These days it’s called recycling, but I guess I’m just a scavenger.”[/quote]. Read more at the Charleston City Paper.
The Boston Globe has a story about some twice-rescued woodwork that is looking for its third home. Some paneling from an early American mansion, Sparhawk Hall, is available after being reclaimed from it’s second home.
Painting of Sparhawk Hall
You might be jealous of birds’ ability to fly, but you’ve probably never been jealous of their houses. Until now. Transition over at LumberJocks found inspiration from a Goldfinch and turned shop scraps into this treasure.
Did you accidentally invite too many people to your cookout? Or maybe that lawnchair finally gave up after a few too many UV rays? Playatech has free plans for furniture you can not only build from simple materials, but can be disassembled for transport and storage.
A nice post over at Popular Woodworking shows how easy it is to replace an insert on a Byrd Cutterhead. If you can afford one, that is.
A nice outdoor chair you can build with dimensional lumber? Better build two! Free plans over at Popular Woodworking.
Sanity over at Lumberjocks made a gorgeous mobile workbench with a solid maple top, locking casters mounted on custom plates, and other features. While it was made for a small shop, it wouldn’t look out of place in a nice kitchen either.
A Popular Woodworking editor got an up-close look at what Don Williams is up to. He’s one the people working hard at the Smithsonian Museum to preserve artifacts, including furniture and other wood crafts.
“I literally get paid to read old finish manuals. I won’t deny, it’s a pretty good job.”
We both know there’s at least one bit rolling around, or lost in the shavings, in the back corner of your router table. So why not build it a nice little home? Check out this step-by-step plan over at Wood Magazine, and there’s a downloadable/printable version on the last page.
One of the most important parts of any project is selecting the wood you’ll use. While we usually go for a wood based on it’s properties or color or figure, sometimes it’s all about the story. I just ordered myself some Kauri wood from WoodCraft for this reason. It looks pretty plain, but it has some iridescence, and it’s textured like Basswood, but here’s the kicker, it’s 50,000 years old!
The kauri forests originate in the Northern Island of New Zealand, and it has been scientifically proven that they were around before the Ice Age. According to one theory, they were knocked down by a giant tsunami and buried in peat bogs for over 50,000 years, where they were perfectly preserved from the elements that would otherwise have rotted them away.
Not a bad story, and not a bad price either.