Shaker Occasional Tables

nice work … beautiful result … have never heard of Kauri … looks like maple or cherry. Is Kauri a common wood in your country ? Are there shaker communities there as well ?

-- ..... art for lifes sake ... danwalters@lumberjocks.com

Thanks Dan – I’ve only been at this for a year and a half (as a hobby).

Kauri is pretty rare in NZ now. When settlers first arrived the North Island was covered in vast Kauri forests (over a million hectares). The trees were valued for their huge height and vast amounts of clear grained timber (on some of the larger trees the first branch wouldn’t appear under 60 feet). It’s huge lengths of straight timber were also valued for ship spars and the British navy outfitted 1000’s of spars supplied by NZ in the 1800’s. Within 100 years the forests were almost entirely depleted.

Now it’s a rare and protected tree, most of the Kauri for wood work comes from either recycled timber or swamp Kauri stumps dug up. I’ve been luck enough to locate some when people renovate their 100 year old+ houses. I’m not sure what North American woods are similar but it works up beautifully and can have that 3D lustre you see in Cypress or Maple sometimes.

The Shakers never made it to this part of the world as far as I know but I love their furniture nonetheless.

Thanks for the kind comments on my first project here – I can’t wait to get more work finished and posted.
John

-- John, Auckland New Zealand - http://www.farmgeek.co.nz

beautiful.
you are a natural at this “hobby”

-- "Functional WoodArt" by Debbie, Canada (http://www.execulink.com/~yohan)

Nice project John, I also like the history lesson on the wood-very interesting. Isn’t it wonderful to salvage old wood and create something new with it.

-- Bill - "Suit yourself and let the rest be pleased." http://www.cajunpen.com/

Great looking tables. I’m glad you finished them and shared them with us.

-- Jesus is Lord!

Thanks everyone for the kind comments. The roll call of really accomplished wood workers here is amazing (and a little daunting for first time posters) but it’s a huge encouragement to get more work finished and posted.

Bill, you’re absolutely right – re-using old wood is doubly gratifying. You get to make something with some history behind it, save more stuff going to the landfill and you get to work with material that already has that beautiful colouring you want your piece to have in the future. The trade-off is the work required to get the wood into usable condition (and the price of resharpening blades more often than you’d like) but I’m happy with that deal :)

It may sound funny, but I believe working with historic wood is making me a better woodworker. It really makes you focus on quality, care and economic cutting – you want your piece to live up to the potential of the wood, but also you know it’s a scarce resource so you can’t just buy more if you mess up a cut. It’s not that I’d be sloppy working with pine, but there’s an extra edge of “don’t screw this up” with the nice stuff.

-- John, Auckland New Zealand - http://www.farmgeek.co.nz

Geek! Nice job and excellent detail. Thanks for sharing!

-- You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. (Plato)