Carving up a big old chair into smaller goodies.

I had some 70s era chairs from a garage sale purchase, just a couple months ago. But they were in poor condition; for example, the leather had not been conditioned, the dry straps cracking or snapped in places. They hogged space in the shop (garage) too, just gathering sawdust.

I bought them as they were cheap and made of good mahogany. For most of my past projects I’ve mainly stuck to cheaper, construction grade redwood or pine, so this was a happy find.

Finally, today I tried an simple mini-project with reusing the wood.

Before

This poor fellow was selected for today’s harvest.

Ouch

The leather was labor intensive to remove cleanly due to the old nails. A few times, the nail head broke off, and I’d dig the decapitated nail stalk out of the wood.

Unwisely, I also left some loose nails on the floor, and I stepped on one. It pierced through the sole of my shoes, jabbing the pad of my foot, but I stopped before it drew blood.

Leather Scraps

Some leather scraps came out of the disassembly too, but those will probably go out in the next trash collection. They’re not in great condition.

Salvaged Lumber

The boards were pretty skinny, but that’s really ok. I want to start focusing on smaller palm-sized projects anyway – things that I can start and finish in one weekend without ado.

Cubes

One of the cross bars from the chair seat was riddled with snapped nails I couldn’t remove. So I milled out a short three-inch segment of clear wood between the nails.

After some fiddling with the band saw and sand paper, these two cuties came about, about 1" x 1" in size.

Hair Ties

It became a little hair tie with the help of some butcher block conditioner (it was what I had) and an elastic hair tie (donated by my roommate).

Next Steps

I’d like to try this again, with some lessons learned:

  • Use a lighter finish to preserve the wood’s natural color without darkening it so much.
  • Use one cube per hair-tie. Two is unwieldy and makes the elastic band hard to “double-up”.
  • Use a lower profile approach to fasten the hair tie terminals.
  • Use a larger board to start, because running the saw for tiny objects like this can be scary. Fingers get close to blades.

Compared to home furniture, I had fun making these basic cubes; plus I now have a proof of concept for reusing lumber from the chairs.

I look forward to trying the cubes again soon, and then moving on to other project ideas with the salvaged lumber.