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Making something old, old again

Blog by Rob Brown
The Old Gate

There’s a table theme to the shop work I’ve been doing recently.

The large white oak dining table I’ve been writing about the past few weeks is finished, and I’ve now moved on to a surprisingly large coffee table destined for a cottage. In fact, after this table’s finished, I’ll be starting another coffee table.

Rustic is in

My client wanted to bring a lot of weather-worn lumber into the picture for this coffee table. We searched a few places for appropriate boards and finally found what we were looking for – a large salvaged exterior gate that had to be at least a century old. Five 9′ long boards made up the bulk of the gate, while four cross pieces held the main boards together. The boards had a lot of deep texture in them, complete with loads of cracks, splits and soft, deteriorating wood in a few sections. The perfect find!

I removed the nails as carefully as possible and fit the pieces in the back of my vehicle to bring them to my workshop. I left them in the sun for a few days to help dry them, as the areas that overlapped with the cross pieces were still a bit wet.

Start working these boards

The boards were 9′ long, though the coffee table was going to be between 7′ and 8′ in length and about 36″ wide. A hefty size for a coffee table. I mixed and matched the boards a hundred different ways until I felt I had the best composition with the knots evenly spaced, rotting ends removed and a live edge on one long edge.

Camouflaging fresh cuts

The hardest part of this project was masking the exposed new, unaged wood after making fresh crosscuts in the boards. The trick would be to use various tools and techniques to add depth and texture, mainly to the end grain of the boards.

Once the fresh cuts were made with a jigsaw, I used a power carving attachment in my angle grinder, a half round file, a rotary wire brush chucked in my corded drill and a wire brush, in that order, to bring an aged look to the ends of some of the boards. The first three tools did the bulk of the shaping, while the rotary wire brush added the much-needed aged look. The hand-held wire brush helped remove most of the softer material that would otherwise come loose later, like in the client’s home.

Feet to stand on

The legs couldn’t be made from salvaged material, as they needed to be strong. These needed to have an aged look, too, so they would match nicely with the boards that make up the top. I laminated some white ash to create the leg blanks, then cut their edges off to create an octagonal shape. From here, I shaped them by hand. I considered turning them on a lathe, but that would have left them perfectly round. A hand-shaped approach would leave a few imperfections and better match the rest of the material that makes up the table.

Once the legs were roughly shaped, I used the same rotary wire brush to remove some of the softer early wood pores, adding the illusion that decades of time wore these pores away, rather than five minutes of work with a wire brush. I used white ash because ring porous woods lend themselves to this technique. The early wood and late wood pores of maple and cherry have similar densities, so wouldn’t provide me with the aged look I was after.

Thankfully, the fresh colour of the exposed wood didn’t matter, as the table was going to be finished with a couple coats of black Rubio Monocoat.

Bring it all together

I made a plywood sub-top to support the top boards, chamfered its outer edge to reduce the chance it would ever be seen, then fixed the legs to its undersurface. That’s where things stand now. Next up will be to stain the top boards and the base with two coats of Rubio black and attach these relatively flimsy boards to the sub-top in a way that will keep them in place for years to come.

The finishing process scares me a bit. These old softwood boards are like sponges and will soak up any sort of finish I apply to them. This, coupled with the fact that the cost of Rubio isn’t low, makes me wonder how this will all play out. Also, Rubio is typically applied to a flat surface with a flat card of some sorts, then wiped clean. I would need about 10 gallons of Rubio to use that approach on this table. I’m thinking a stiff-bristle brush will allow me to get the Rubio into all the nooks and crannies, but only time will tell.

When building one-of-a-kind pieces of furniture you’re often faced with uncertain situations. How will the aged wood affect the building process? How strong will the top boards be if someone sits on the table? Will the freshly cut ends stick out like a sore thumb? I’m sure there will be many other question marks and challenges, but they’ll only rear their ugly heads as the project progresses.

The Old Gate

Here’s the old gate we found for the coffee table.

The Old Gate

Wet Sections

The areas where two boards overlapped were somewhat wet and slightly rotten. Most of these sections were trimmed off.

Wet sections

Holding Power

The nails did a surprisingly good job at holding these boards together over the years. In fact, some of these nails were quite hard to remove.

Holding Power

Tools for Aging

In order, these are the tools I used to make the freshly cut board ends look aged.

Tools for Aging

What’s New Is Now Old Again

Here’s a closer look at some of the newly shaped edges that make up the tabletop.

Published:
Last modified: October 3, 2024

Rob Brown - [email protected]

Rob is a studio furniture maker and the editor at Canadian Woodworking & Home Improvement. Instagram at @RobBrownTeaches

4 Comments

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  2. We only use old timber when building planter boxes/ seats for the local school bird boxes and bee hives our men’s shed only use old materials

    1. Hi Barry: These videos should be viewable by everyone – Canadian or otherwise. However if you are using a VPN (virtual private network) you may experience problems view the video.

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