Reply To: Wood purchasing – Hull Humberside East Yorkshire
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The old furniture thing is an interesting avenue. I would be interested to hear of success stories.
I think that it’s a win all round to reuse wood where practical.
The challenge I see with “recycling” old furniture is that the necessary steps to prepare it for it’s new life often involve making the the existing components shorter and thinner (often not insignificantly). The frustrating thing is that at the end of breaking down the old furniture and preparing the wood stock, you are left with the perfect components to make…. a smaller version of the thing you just destroyed. Oh the irony.
These challenges may be fun if you are creative and flexible with your requirements, or are mainly making small items.
In my experience, old furniture with nice wood e.g. oak, mahogany etc, isn’t free and the chances are it could be repaired or restored much more easily than breaking it down and making something new. It might also have been painstaking made by a fellow craftsman, so it might seem a bit of an act of vandalism to break it down for wood unless it’s badly damaged already or poorly made.
On the other hand, people are always getting rid of old pine furniture either for free or very cheap considering the amount of wood. Old pine tables would have some good thick sections and they are probably well seasoned and much better quality than the B&Q rubbish…