salt and wood

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A friend donated 4 old Oak table legs from a cache that had been lingering under his mum’s house. You can see the great colour that was revealed from sanding the surfaces of this one leg back. Followed by some trimming of the ends to set the standing angle and sliding of a segment forward to form the rest ledge. I glued the main body pieces then drilled a big hole up from the base and hammered a big dowel pinning the whole thing together vertically. The LP record impression in the upper face was done with various drill bits. And the finger lift hole in the upper rear was core drilled and a stamped disc inserted. Some street found quarter dowel and bits of ply finished off the base platform and rear brush screen.

Tags: Beach house sculpture, cafe furniture, carpentry, design, re-purpose, recycle, recycled sculpture, street found, street found timber, streetwood, timber restored

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Recycled timber bangles. This second run (refer ITEM 92) was as above but managed to incorporate some more contrasting timbers. And varnished the end product instead of oil.

Tags: Beach house sculpture, cafe furniture, carpentry, design, re-purpose, recycle, recycled sculpture, street found, street found timber, streetwood, timber restored

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Recycled timber bangles. Inspired by a wooden bangle gift that my wife received (not from me) I couldn’t resist seeing what variations of this idea I could produce from found timber scraps. Basically I gathered various planks like bits of maple and plywood and then glued them on top of each other to thicken the medium. Then using 2 differing core drill bits simply cut out the outer circle then the hole. Then went a bit crazy with a belt sander and some spray paints. You can see I also pressure stamped them ‘SW’ and then rubbed olive oil into the finished pieces to bring out the grain.

Tags: Beach house sculpture, cafe furniture, carpentry, design, re-purpose, recycle, recycled sculpture, street found, street found timber, streetwood, timber restored

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Yet another door wedge found washed up on the beach after serving its time on a boat somewhere. You can see here I simply sanded it back to life, varnished it, added some colour and stamped it.

Tags: Beach house sculpture, cafe furniture, carpentry, design, re-purpose, recycle, recycled sculpture, street found, street found timber, streetwood, timber restored

Yet another CD stand. This cheery little guy is honed from a laminated beam off cut I found washed up at the beach. Simply restored selective surfaces and sliced it to form the projecting stand element. It is stamped and embossed. I used a felt tip pen to ink the ITEM No. embossing before varnishing.

Tags: Beach house sculpture, cafe furniture, carpentry, design, re-purpose, recycle, recycled sculpture, street found, street found timber, streetwood, timber restored

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A mysterious object landing on a beach at the edge of the vast Pacific Ocean after traveling who knows where on what ship and then how long drifting at sea. It looks like it had some sort of lines running over it and cutting into it where it had been nailed down and was also possibly cut into a door wedge for its next duty at sea? Either way it had a lot of character by the time I chanced across it. Knocked the nails out, filled the holes with colored wax and sanded it all then added a little yellow sports stripe. Just because I could. The wax ended up making this ‘hot rod flaming comet.’ And so combined with the objects journey to create the name ‘Hale Bop’ (if you remember the comet from the 1990s).

 A curious objet d’art or a door jam with stories to tell.

 ‘Comet Hale–Bopp (formally designated C/1995 O1) was perhaps the most widely observed comet of the 20th century and one of the brightest seen for many decades. It was visible to the naked eye for a record 18 months, twice as long as the previous record holder, the Great Comet of 1811’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Hale%E2%80%93Bopp

Tags: Beach house sculpture, cafe furniture, carpentry, design, re-purpose, recycle, recycled sculpture, street found, street found timber, streetwood, timber restored

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A large drawer from the 60s era, with the sleek lines of the cast metal handles and the laminated front and hot on the heels of ITEM 52 I had another foray into painting the base/ now rear face panel. This worked very well with the detail of the pine-laminated base ply; note the patina of tiny knots in the rear face detail. The same rescued Cedar skirting was used for the shelves as in ITEM 52. And again it has all the face, side and rear surfaces restored and is braced to be wall mounted or free standing on the added bar feet. Probably even a little bigger than ITEM 52.

The colorful ITEM 53 would look great wall mounted anywhere a bit of fun and timber detail was desirable!

And is now available for $200. First in. Drop me a note in the comments box.

Tags: Beach house sculpture, cafe furniture, carpentry, design, re-purpose, recycle, recycled sculpture, street found, street found timber, streetwood, timber restored

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An old drawer, take a guess? Say circa 1930s. Great wooden handles dovetail joints and what I am guessing is Eucalyptus side and rear walls! You almost never come across this as everything now is compound material and before that was pine sides and rear to save the good stuff for the visible areas, a matter of supply and demand. There was a time when Sydney’s streets were paved with hardwood cobbles!

 Though ironically the system that the city authorities insist on today is even more environmentally destructive. That is all the pretty unit paving across the footpaths of the city is underpinned with concrete slab!!! The carbon footprint of this activity is phenomenal and no doubt far out ways the touted carbon savings of the cities myriad highly publicized rain gardens and community vegetable groups and so on and completely unnecessary. There are many thriving metropolises across the world that have the common sense to lay there flat cobble or unit paving foot-ways on a compacted sub base that can easily be lifted jiggled and reset to suit street alterations, access to water/ electricity services and so on. So its lay it on a compacted crushed recycled base that can be easily massaged when needed VS:

1 Unnecessarily producing cement (the biggest carbon culprit by far as far as carbon emissions go)  

2 All the machinery, fuel energy and water use involved in the bringing, mixing, laying, and setting of the concrete and cleaning of all the equipment.

3 All the machinery, fuel energy and water use involved in the smashing up (and throwing away and replacing) of the cemented down unit paving and concrete slab to access services or even just adjust mistakes or adjust to new construction or tree roots and so on.

4 And then, like Groundhog Day, you have to REPEAT steps one and two to put it all back again and again and again.

OK so I got a little off track there, I also recovered some (possibly) type of Red Cedar skirting from a skip and devised a way of mounting it backwards such that I could benefit from the width and amazing grain and things would not fall of the shelves, you can see this in picture 10. I restored the timber grain backing then thought I would have a little pattern fun on the back. Decided that was way cooler than the timber finish and reversed the backing. The numbered plugs can be removed and the backing switched at will. I cut all of the drawer surfaces back to the excellent grain but only gave the handles a wipe over before putting them back on (that’s why they are darker). I reinforced the hull with some cross bars that allow the unit to be wall mounted and added the bar feet so it can stand-alone as well, the cross bars were salvaged from and old bed I found on the street. If you look at picture 11 where I have the backing out, you can see it was ‘Karla’ who must have slept in this bed! I wonder where Karla is now?

The colorful ITEM 52 would look great wall mounted in an entry hallway or anywhere really!

And is now available for $200. First in. Drop me a note in the comments box.

Tags: Beach house sculpture, cafe furniture, carpentry, design, re-purpose, recycle, recycled sculpture, street found, street found timber, streetwood, timber restored