Skip to content

salt and wood

“Re use it or lose it”

March 1, 2015 ITEM 91 300 YEAR OLD BENCH

91 01
91 02
91 03
91 04
91 05
91 06
91 07
91 08
91 09
91 10
91 11
91 12
91 13
91 14
91 15
91 16
91 17
91 18
91 19
91 20
91 21

 

I wrestled these two hardwood beams from a skip bin not too far from my house and carted them home on the roof of the trusty Subaru. A note here that if you ever decide to dabble in the high art of scavenging recyclable materials, I highly recommend acquiring a clapped out Subaru wagon with Rhino roof racks. There is not much I have not been able to easily shift around with this.

 

These beams were deceptively and enormously heavy and old by Aussi building standards. Coming from a renno of a big old Newtown terrace. I could guess that this is Eucalyptus that was hundreds of years old when it was cut and that was probably around 140 years ago. So lets say the tree this timber is from was a germinating seed around 300 years ago!!!!

 

Once home I determined the choice cuts to chop the beams down to more manageable size. The scraps made exceptional firewood for the BBQ. Then there was all the knocking off of trimming timber, sanding, de-nailing and so on just to get down to the great colour and character of this timber. The legs were cut out of the beam and the rest of the process of becoming a bench is apparent in the pictures. Basically I embarked on a bit of rebating and used a found broom handle to do the doweling to pin all the bits together. Another broom handle forms the red bracing detail under the seat. And a scrap bit of timber was used to fill a rebate on the surface where it is stamped.

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

%d bloggers like this: