45 knots

This wardrobe is constructed of Brazilian cherry, reclaimed poplar, oak, and a tad bit of mahogany. This piece features two hanging compartments and one drawer. 56" wide, 68"tall, and 27" deep.

This set of photographs was taken next to the dairy barn on my grandparent's farm. That site is home to decades of very early mornings, long days, and a lot of hard work. In rainy conditions, as the holstein cows walked up to the holding area, they would all have muddy legs and hooves. I like the way that the legs on this piece appear similarly earthy and muddy as compared to rest of the light colored body of this piece of furniture.

Galaxie porch swing

Old jallopies have better places to spend there latter days than junkyards.... like front porches!

This porch swing is made from an old Ford Galaxie- which in my opinion was a really slick car. Two great places to sit- the hood of a car and the front porch- are now united!

crop circle coffee table

Recipe for this table: slice up old mahogany coffee table with a deteriorated finish, mix and match some unused cedar and rough pine. Build some drawer box legs from dismantled pallets. Throw in some brave attempts to make straight lines and circles freehand with a router, and, viola, a coffee table inspired by crop circles.

4ft by 4ft by 15 inches tall

palindrome chest

Here's a piece of furniture completed a few months ago. The word palindrome describes a word or sequence of numbers that can be read the same forwards as it can backwards.

This piece was constructed almost entirely out of reused materials. The doors consist of panels from old interior doors and pine boards used as interior panelling from an old house. The handles are poplar spindles attached to hinges, which provide an interesting opening and closing action.

The wood used for the case is Brazilian cherry, which was given to me by a nice gentleman in Troy, AL. Upon recently buying his farm, he found thousands of board feet of this cherry in a barn, and donated all of it to various people and charitable groups. The rest of the case is made of plywood scraps patchworked together.

dimensions: 66" by 48"

Mod shelves

overall dimensions: 78" wide, 50" tall, 19" deep

This piece is constructed entirely of laminated plywood and scrap wood. After gathering wood from the scrap bins for a week or so, all pieces were milled down to a constant dimension and glued up to form solid sheets.

The bottom section features a drawer whose face rotates on a horizontal axis, allowing it to double as the drawer pull as well.

Cappadocia stool

This stool was inspired by a recent trip to Turkey on the trusty old laptop. The legs consist of poplar, while the top is a laminate of oak, basswood, poplar, and cedar, and were shaped on the bandsaw. The skirt and stretchers are cedar.

This piece utilizes mortis and tenon joinery, accompanied by walnut pins for added strength. This piece was completed in the spring of 2008.

dimensions: 30" long, 18" tall, 19" wide

Natural edge cedar doors

Here we have a charming set of cedar screen doors, the top one residing in Alabama and the bottom one lives in Georgia.

The first features rough sawn lumber and half lap joinery in each corner, accompanied by a set of oak pegs for added strength (since there is technically no middle rail.) An old trowel found in a barn serves as the handle. This door gets to look at a lake all day long. The middle plank was scribed and cuts were made to allow the natural shape to drop into the top and bottom rails.

The bottom door is constructed from the same batch of cedar, but was planed and sanded to a much smoother texture, and coated with linseed oil. This door also utilizes half lap joinery in each corner, as well as the middle rail.

"the 45" barnwood coffee table

This table was built from wood salvaged from a cattle barn in Enterprise, AL. Splits in portions of each board rendered them no longer usable in a livestock setting, but instead made them perfect material for a piece of furniture.

The table earned the name "45" since each board has a 45 degree angle on each end, and because the longest boards all measure 45 inches from the long point to the short point.

Even though all of the boards had aged to the same dusty and weather-beaten patina, once they were cleaned and came through the planer it was evident they were not all the same species. Oak, pine, chestnut, and poplar were all used by the original barn carpenters.

20 inches tall, 5 feet 10 inches long, 32 inches wide.

Atypical Armoire

This piece came about in an interesting manner, and from a multitude of wood species. The doors were constructed first, and everything else fell into place later.

The doors are built from old heart pine wood salvaged from family land in Bellwood, AL that was homesteaded six generations back, so I wanted to preserve as much of that material as possible.

The feet on the right side are constructed from the scraps of a set of trivets (cedar, poplar, birch, oak, and hickory are all in there). The legs on the left are constructed of basswood (posts) and laminated egde grain plywood (feet). The stretchers are old spindles found in the shop at school. The face frame is poplar, and the handles are made from old oak palatte skids. The case is constructed of scrap plywood and basswood.

Inside, there is a blue formica shelf that lines up with the bottom of the top left door. That door utilizes aircraft hinges to facilitate an opening motion similar to that of an overhead compartment.

Behind the large door to the right is a hanging rack. The two doors with vertically oriented handles operate in the conventional right/left doorswing motion.

dimensions: 2ft deep by 6ft tall