Working with REAL wood.

There's something about working with wood which fires my imagination. Not just the creation of beautiful finished objects, though that in itself can be the inspiration for the effort. It's more about how the material behaves, sometimes the unpredictability and having to work around imperfections, which can in themselves add character and value to the final piece.

So any excuse to get my hands on a nice piece of particularly English hardwood and make something of it is something I'll seize on. Recently I was asked if I could make a solid wood 'store' to fit in an alcove alongside a woodburner. In addition, some characterful shelves to sit above it. The house had recently been purchased, and the owners are in the process of making it their own. The mess of shelves there currently were of the typical 'Next' or 'Ikea' floating variety - dodgily secured on the back wall by a couple of screws and a flimsy bracket, precariously leaning forward if anything heavier than a feather has ever been placed upon them. (You can tell my disdain for this type of shelf - after all, what's nicer than a good quality ornamental bracket, with the practicalities that go with it?)

"Solid wood with a waney edge" was the brief. So off to Tyler Hardwoods I trotted, and found myself a fantastic 3.8m piece of English Ash, which I had milled to 30mm thick and 350mm wide.

Champing at the bit to get on with the project, the first stage was to cut and joint the 'wood store' section. Cutting hardwood requires a sharp saw, and I must admit to not trusting my various powered varieties, so this was undertaken by hand. Then the chopping of joints I only ever undertake manually with mallet & chisel.

There was a couple of afternoon's work there before I was ready to put the simple box structure together....

And when 'completed, it did look a wonderfully artisanal piece of rustic 'furniture'.

Before legs and finishing, shelves required, and the challenge of how to fit them into a relatively small and tight alcove. Equally, whilst I personally hate 'floating' shelves, I knew there was a way to make these appear as if floating but with the structural support needed to take books and the like. So I set to work making some brackets from the offcuts of the Ash.......

And then continued on towards the shelves, chopping 'hidden' slots into each which would eventually house the brackets invisibly.

Another couple of days and I had the shelves ready.

Now it was simply a matter of turning some front legs for the woodstore (I'd already made the back legs, which wouldn't be seen, from some Ash offcuts) from a piece of Tulipwood in my store.

After that, fitting and finishing off, with a couple of coats of Danish Oil as requested by client, and the finished woodstore is pictured below.

Then it was a short (essential journey, in these Covid times) trip up the M3 to fit the shelves and unit, where it now looks spectacularly better than the old white nonsense, as well, very importantly, of doing a decent job of keeping their lounge tidy!

(Given the finished appearance of the 'woodstore', I'm not convinced that they are actually going to use it for such a mundane chore after all though.......)