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salt and wood

“Re use it or lose it”

Tag Archives: driftwood

March 29, 2013 ITEM 16: PHAT JOEL

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Who can say where this wedge washed over board or for how long it floated around in the ocean. Sometimes it takes very little to generate something beautiful. Simply trimming the nose square and drilling and doweling a couple of timber pins to compensate for the big centre split (pin striping). The sides and rear retain the character of its travels while the top and bottom were sanded and varnished revealing great character and a beautiful rich golden timber that I have not identified. It also sports an interesting little rebate in one side from some past purpose. It was probably a door jam on a boat. It could be a door jam again or maybe just a sculptural talking piece. Phat Joel because I made it as a request piece for a guy named Joel who is Phat but not fat.

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March 21, 2013 ITEM 27: Salt Shelf

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3 Prepping
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4 A beautiful thing
5 Stamped and satin finish
6 In full swing

Bower (A donated materials and objects enterprise on Addison Road) recovered timber mantle cut and varnished. Bay found flotsam has been doweled to main shelf to create legs.

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July 26, 2012 Item 25: LD2

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Long drawer was the first item posted on this blog. It had a brother piece that was found with it and has now finally been converted into a companion CD shelf. Unlike Long Drawer one that was shelved with sides from other drawers, this one is shelved with restored driftwood boards and has a white painted internal surface rather than the paper lining.  

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March 3, 2012 Boat 28: Mellow Flying V

Mellow because its yellow and Flying V because the keel is a V drink bottle and a reference to the Gibson Flying V guitar. Self-righting flotsam boats with a sand and water filled keel was one revelation. But adding a glass bottle instead of plastic takes it up a notch, being heavier, serving the purpose better. Glass bottles are a scarce material for a flotsam boat as obviously most that find their way into the sea sink. Somebody has to drink enough of the contents to create buoyancy and recap the bottle before it goes overboard. Which means glass bottles on the beach are either accidentally lost overboard or the result of obsessive-compulsive litterers. In a similar vein rudders are more difficult to come by, as they need to be fine flat and dense. Fine flat and dense things tend to sink when they fall overboard. The rudder on this boat is a piece of angle bar that was unscrewed from a piece of ply that it hitched to shore on. It fitted pretty snugly over the rectilinear timber hull. I used a bit of flotsam and rope as a sled to collect bits for this one, on this grey day it must have looked like a scene from ‘The Road.’ You can see in these pictures that the aluminum can rudder made way for the angle bar rudder by launch time. The handle of the detergent bottle strapped to the bow is an air rudder helping pull the bow forward. How did she sail? Well there was a slow consistent breeze but now real wake off the bow to talk of at launch. I think the sail was set a little to far back causing her to stall at times. So to tell the truth she was doing as much drifting as sailing out.        

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January 4, 2012 ITEM 14: SALT BOARD HW PLY

This is the second condiments board created from a piece of driftwood. This one was generated from a length of hardwood ply recovered from Yarra Bay (refer picture 1 foreground). The ends have been clean cut but the edges retain their organic character formed from the action of sun and sea. I Also added the finger hole and apart from the general sanding and varnishing process an additional area was sanded across the base to take the Item 14 stamp. The base side seems like it had some sort of laminate over it. You can see some little rubber feet have been added to create the shadow line under the whole piece.  There is an interesting array of nicks and crush marks over the piece. Especially the Y shaped mark on the right side of the top surface from some unknown event.

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