That ugly plastic-covered pile has been sitting in our driveway for about a year now. It may look like junk to most people, but it's like gold to me. Underneath is a pile of lumber that was salvaged from the Granary District building where the Saturday Market is held. One day Carson Benner called and asked if I wanted some free wood. His construction company, Cellar Ridge Custom Homes was doing the work, and these beams were replaced and couldn't be used in that space. There is no official way to recycle lumber around here. When you take it to the recycling center they send it off to be burned as a power source for a cement factory. That would have been a crime for this wood (as I hope to show.)
We are getting ready to do some remodeling at Wednesday Wines here in McMinnville. We want to create a lot more areas for folks to sit around and talk and enjoy some wine, so I have been elected to make a new tasting area. It's going to be a 13 foot long bar that will run the back of the shop. The first step was to cut the beams in two.
That's one of the beams to the right. They are fourteen feet long, and they are heavy! It was definitely a two person job. In addition we had to run them through the saw twice, so we would run them through, flip them end for end, and then run them through again. Luckily I had Mike Campbell there to help me out. There are a lot of jobs I can do myself, but this is not one of them. I love to cut old wood open. It is so rewarding. You have this old, weathered wood, and when you cut it open it reveals beautiful, new wood. It's so rewarding, especially when you consider that this lumber might have gotten burned up in an industrial incinerator.
That's Mike to the right looking at one of the beams that we cut in two. These beams are douglas fir and I would guess they are around 75 to 100 years old. They are not clear and free of knots and imperfections. That's part of what I love about them. Some of the boards even had worm holes running along the wood. I think that gives them so much personality. The next step in the project is to glue the boards together. Basically you use a liberal amount of Elmer's glue, combined with a lot of pressure to join them. There is an old carpenter's saying that you can never have enough clamps in your shop. I'll admit, I have a lot. Some I purchased, and some I got from my Dad's shop when he was done using woodworking tools. And this project took just about every clam I had available.
These are called pipe clamps and they can produce a massive amount of pressure on the joints. You know you have the right amount of glue and force when you see glue dripping out of every joint. In 24 hours the glue has set up about as hard as it ever will. If you do it right the glue joint is as strong, or stronger that the wood itself. I'm going to leave these in the clamps until this weekend (when the weather is suppose to be nice!) and then I'll pull them off, hand plane down the surfaces, sand the top and apply the stain. I'm going to try and keep posting the progress as I go. We're planning on doing the demolition at the shop on Mother's Day, (Happy Mother's Day Honey, would you hand me that hammer?) We'll be having a grand reopening celebration on May 12th and 13th.
That's Mike to the right looking at one of the beams that we cut in two. These beams are douglas fir and I would guess they are around 75 to 100 years old. They are not clear and free of knots and imperfections. That's part of what I love about them. Some of the boards even had worm holes running along the wood. I think that gives them so much personality. The next step in the project is to glue the boards together. Basically you use a liberal amount of Elmer's glue, combined with a lot of pressure to join them. There is an old carpenter's saying that you can never have enough clamps in your shop. I'll admit, I have a lot. Some I purchased, and some I got from my Dad's shop when he was done using woodworking tools. And this project took just about every clam I had available.
These are called pipe clamps and they can produce a massive amount of pressure on the joints. You know you have the right amount of glue and force when you see glue dripping out of every joint. In 24 hours the glue has set up about as hard as it ever will. If you do it right the glue joint is as strong, or stronger that the wood itself. I'm going to leave these in the clamps until this weekend (when the weather is suppose to be nice!) and then I'll pull them off, hand plane down the surfaces, sand the top and apply the stain. I'm going to try and keep posting the progress as I go. We're planning on doing the demolition at the shop on Mother's Day, (Happy Mother's Day Honey, would you hand me that hammer?) We'll be having a grand reopening celebration on May 12th and 13th.