Here are the reclaimed Douglas fir beams from the building after being resawn, but before milling. We think they're from an addition to the building from 1870, about 30 years after the building was erected in 1838.
Our project is to build several different pieces of furniture for the building, which is being renovated, using the salvaged lumber from the building.
Amazingly, there are still pockets of wet sap in the wood that was probably cut about 140 years ago.We'll all become accustomed to Douglas fir's distinctive smell, which we'll be smelling for the next 7 weeks.
Because of massive checking in the beams, we've had to mill down a fairly large amount of wood for our three small end tables. We're slowly learning the tricks of working with Douglas fir, which is more often used in construction and framing rather than fine woodworking.
At the end of the day, we've got our 3 table tops clamped and glued up, and the legs are tapered and ready to be mortised and tenoned in tomorrow morning.
We're trying to get the tables completely assembled by Thursday, so we've got a lot of work ahead of us in the next couple of days.
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