Been awhile

Well looks like I took a little break since the last post - almost a 2 year break!  I'm surprised blogging is still something people do.  Anyway, not sure if anyone is going to read this, but I'm starting a new project and thought I'd try and document it like I did for the slab coffee table.

So perhaps a little update.  Probably the main reason that I haven't been blogging is that really haven't been doing much woodworking due life being busy with young kids and the fact that we moved this past winter which resulted in a focus on basic home renovations.  (The house we purchased was built in 1908, so there is no shortage of projects to tackle!)

This project will be a kitchen island for our new/old kitchen.  After some discussion and poking around, we decided that we would like an island made out of reclaimed wood.  In fact, the island we would like is this guy from Restoration Hardware - which they call the Salvage Wood Kitchen Island Small.

A couple of problems with this.  The first is that they are asking $1500.00+ for it - yikes!  Also, looking closely at the picture I don't think this is actually reclaimed wood at all, more like "roasted" wood which is a process they use to get this look.  Also, they claim it is unfinished, and it appears to be softwood - my 2 year old son would destroy this thing in a matter of hours....

So, looks like a dead simple design - let's make this our-self out of reclaimed hardwood (assuming I can find some).  Off to Kijiji and low and behold, a fellow only 5 kms or so from my house is advertising reclaimed wood that he sourced from Kentucky.  It is said to be from a signal tower built during the American civil war no less!  I envision something like this structure which was near New Market, Va.

George from The Galt Wood Co. was a pleasure to meet and hooked me up with 80 board-feet of reclaimed either gumwood or redwood, we're not sure.  In any case it is heavy, so defnitely a hardwood of some sort, should last another 150 years with ease.  Here it is on my car:

I've never worked with reclaimed material before so I had a bunch of questions and George was kind enough to answer them all and then some.

The wood is pretty dirty and still has a lot of nails in it.  Most of the nails are more like mini railway spikes, straight from the 1800's pretty neat, but difficult to remove.  My first task was to pressure wash the materials to get rid of the surface dirt.  I tried to be careful not to over do it, as you can easily cause surface damage to the wood if you aren't careful with the pressure washer.  I'll need to wait until the stock dries to see if I was successful.

Here it is drying on my work bench.  I'll give it a few days.

By the way, that is my new/old basement which will serve as my new shop.  A lot of the shop is still in boxes and this project will be the first one in the new house and thus I suspect a lot of shop improvements will take place while I work on this.