I made this wine with 100+ year old wood, reclaimed from a house reno in downtown Montreal, QC. There are no nails or screws in the wine rack, only glue and dowels. The rack is finished with a slight burn and waxing.
I was inspired to submit after seeing the Book/ Curio Shelf by Troy Chelsberg. Not because my woodworking is up to his level but because of his and my use of “junk”. My coffee table is made of the left over picket sign sticks from the Ontario teacher strikes of January 2020. They are your very basic pine, I believe, and wouldn’t even do much for you in a fire but gave me one more opportunity to be creative. Lots of glue and poly but no hardware. I’m a local Union leader and now have it in my office.
Wood: Wenge, padauk and quilted maple
Size: 3/4″ x 12″ x 20″
Joinery: #20 and #10 biscuits. Titebond glue
Construction (adapted from Reader’s Digest): Cut strips from maple and wenge to make the guitar “neck”, thickness plane them to size, and then glue and clamp the pieces together. Once the glue has dried dimension it to final thickness. Use a template to draw the guitar shape and cut it out on the bandsaw. Drill holes for the legs. Sand with 120-, 150-, 180- and 220-grit. Install the legs and routed hand grips. The board is finished with a high quality food safe oil. It took about 10 hours to complete this project.
My first intarsia project is from a Judy Gale Roberts pattern. I used Burnt Ash, Spanish Cedar and Western Red Cedar, and finished Mr. Wabbit with Old Master’s Poly Gel. I learned a lot along the way and I’m looking forward to my next project.
This Black ash coffee table was put together using 12 separate pieces of salvaged black ash that were approximately 4″ thick, 20″ long, giving an overall width of 3 feet.
I used a dado blade to groove each board to accept spline tenons. I then drew 1″ grid lines to map out the pattern. I used a router to mill pattern lines to a 3/8″ depth, and used a Foredom and a lot of hand sanding to complete the shaping.
To round the edges of outside profile I used a Makita die grinder with different rasp bits. The black lines and white dots are ecopoxy inlaid. The finish is three coats of teak oil followed by 3 coats of clear gloss varathane.
