I’ve written about the work I’ve been involved in, turning a warehouse unit into our new Church facilities. In the process we sorted through and made decisions on lots of furniture and items brought over from our previous location. One of those items was a timber dining suite (table & 7 chairs). While some of us thought it would be useful for meetings, others decided that it wasn’t wanted and to just get rid of it.
There was nothing special about it in appearance – it was a typical late 80’s early 90’s design of timber table top with a skirt and 50cm max diameter turned legs. It is stained a dark colour – probably walnut.
The word went out asking if anyone wanted it. With no response. So it was destined to be added to the rubbish that was being disposed of.
Never one to let a good piece of wood ‘get away’ I had a closer look at it. According to the label underneath one of the chairs it was ‘cedar’. Not believing this meant the actual timber, but rather the stain that had been used. But I took the table home & pulled it apart, noticing 2 things:
- the timber was very light
- the unstained underneath of the table was lighter than the stain.
Taking a part of the skirt – I sanded it back to the bare timber and spent several hours trying to prove to myself that it couldn’t be red cedar. I became convinced that I now had a large (200cm x 80cm) slab of Australian Red Cedar that only the day before was destined to be either burnt or buried as rubbish.
I have made a couple of small serving platters from part of the skirt and will soon be making some larger platters from the table top itself.
This table reinforces my view that it is worth investigating any available source of timber because you never know what you will find and whether you will strike gold.