Right now I only build pieces from “Free” material. If I had to buy the material it would probably cost more than I can ask for the finished pieces. Many of these examples are one offs. Sometimes I have enough material to build two, three or four pieces at the same time. It is certainly more efficient, but I don’t have a big shop, so that pushing the limit.
Every one of these pieces has a story and a previous life. Even if I cut out a bunch of pieces at one time, I use different tops or different stains, details, so that each piece is a little different. My designs get tweaked and evolve over time so I don’t get bored making the same little widgets production style.
This piece was constructed out of scraps of this and that. It’s finished with Endura water based lacquer that is very tough stuff. Legs from the White Oak tree on SW Crestwood Lane. The field for the top was maple that was a head board from twin beds I fished out of a dumpster in NW Portland. The edgeband is two different colors of Walnut, from an old dining table I found in a yard, sitting in the rain, racks from the foot board of the twin bed, maybe Birch.
Before and after…
The field for the top of this piece is African Zebra Wood, also called Blackwood. It was a twisted plank that I got 15 years ago. I had to clean out an old garage to remodel it. There were all kinds of various boards that had been sitting there for decades.
Black Walnut edge band from Beaverton logs, White Oak feature strip lamination from the SW Crestwood Lane logs. Legs of the same WO and BW lamination, racks of Oak too. Finished with Sherwin Williams water based lacquer.
Legs for this piece were salvaged out of a 4×12 door header from a remodel in SE Portland. The Racks were from old window sash. The field for the top is very tight grained old growth Fir that was a shelf in a closet in the same house. The feature strip is from my dwindling stash of old growth California Redwood.
Before…
… and after.
I built some display racks to hang marble and tiles in the showroom at IGE Stone, off of Powell Blvd. in Portland. I was left with a huge dolly of 2×4 & 2×6 off cuts from kiln dried Hemlock that were 11″ long. The dolly was under the bench for a couple years covered with a measurable thickness of saw dust.
I was looking for something and had to wheel the dolly out of the way to look. At first I didn’t even remember what this stuff was. My first thought was firewood. The next thought was… what can I do with this stuff? The light bulb went off… butcher block tops.
The experiment worked and people really seem to be impressed. If I had a nickel for every time somebody reached out to run their hand over the tops at the Portland Saturday Market, I wouldn’t have had to sell them!
More old growth Vertical Grain Fir salvaged from painted shelving. Sometimes I can re-saw and plane material leaving clean material with no knots, nail holes or stains from rusty screws or hardware.
Sometimes the material is so nice that the holes reveal a little of it’s past life. There are three nail holes in the top. It’s still cool.
One of my neighbors gave me an old Pine plank that he slabbed from a tree in his back yard when he was a kid in the ’60s. He took it to wood shop class and ran it through a planer. It was 18″ by 8′ long and an inch and an eighth thick. It had some defects but I got three really nice tops out of it.
He was a plumbing contractor who used the plank as a work table on saw horses in his garage for years and gave it to me when he moved.
Before…
… and after.
Normally, I try to mill all the material clean that I salvage. Sometimes the wood is just so nice I leave any defects. I learned a long time ago that soft woods dent and ding very easily. I have had my heart broken so many times, when after planing and sanding everything so smooth, the piece gets bumped into or hit by something. Now I usually sand every piece clean and then put a light distress on it. That way when it does get damaged in daily use, it doesn’t look bad.
This rack turned out so nice I left it alone.
Sometimes it is hard for me to find material. Sometimes it just rains on me. One of the other guys that has a shop in the “Underworld”, my neighbor Lavrens, is a remodeling contractor. He poked his head into my shop and ask if I wanted some material. He gave me a truck load of busted up cabinets, still full of nails and face frames with six coats of paint.
He was remodeling a master bathroom and dressing closet in a house built in the 1920s, in Lake Oswego. The cabs were made from old growth Red Fir and the bottoms, backs and drawers were constructed form Alaskan Yellow Cedar or maybe Port Orford Cedar. When I milled it up for parts, the aromatic Cedar smell in the shop was nearly overwhelming.
This is the Crestwood Lane Table. My wife’s client told her a big tree had blown down across the street. I ran up there and found a giant White Oak that took out all the power in the neighborhood and the corner of a house. It was six feet in diameter at the trunk and fifty feet tall. The logs I cut were eight and ten inch thick limbs from thirty feet in the air. I told the owner I would give him Seventy-five hundred bucks for the tree but he blew me off. Eventually, he paid to have it cut into fire wood and hauled off. Talk about heart break. Beaverton Black Walnut logs for the drawer fronts, panels and feature strip. Oil and wax finish.
This is the first piece I made out of slabs form the Beaverton Black Walnut.
Inset panels, feature strip and my signature drawer pulls made from the Crestwood Lane White Oak.
Oil and wax finish.
Another thick Pine plank that was painted shelving. The only time I use stains is when they are given to me as left overs or fished out of dumpsters. People keep asking me if I ever made things out of “dark wood”. I have to explain that I only use stains on the soft woods, Fir, Hemlock, Pine and Cedar. Personally, I would rather see natural wood but sometimes a light stain make the grain pop out. A little bit of color makes it look alive.
So many people ask me for dark pieces that I mixed together a bunch of left over oil based stains into a big can and then I finish with clear water based lacquers.
Cedar tops from Lavren’s salvaged cabinets…
I had a bunch of left over four quarter maple from a kitchen cabinet job and made these two pieces. Cherry feature strip and I laminated the legs with Cherry too, to make them fatter. I like a substantial look for right now. It’s just a phase I’m in. I will be into thin legs or curved legs, or something else next year.
The phone rang as I was cutting out the drawer parts. I got side tracked…
and forgot to subtract the width of the face frame, making the drawer box too long. It was supposed to be flush like the first one, so I edge banded it with some scraps of the Spalted Apple wood.
A carpenter once told me, “It ain’t a mistake until you can’t fix it any more.”
I got into using ceramic and marble tiles that I found as left overs from remodel jobs or fished out of dumpsters. Here is a series of console tables with drawers…
… and a couple tile tops without drawers.
KTW #1710 Alder w/ Walnut feature strip
KTW #1610a Alder, Sapele, Apple, Black Walnut
I’m constantly building pieces of furniture and wine racks through the year, but many times I don’t get to take photographs before they are sold. Thanks for viewing.
Knot Traditional Woodworks-Portland 