From The Workshop: If it’s warm enough I can paint

It’s Thanksgiving Day and I haven’t been outside yet due to turkey stupor. (We had company over yesterday and did terrible damage to a large bird).

However, I must get out to the shop. One bench needs to be tidied up (put away rescued lumber) so that I can mess it up again with a new project.

The old lumber I rescued from the Dorchester Dump last week turned out to be old cedar and can be turned into birdhouses - the GH model.


I can see why most people would throw out old cedar deck boards; they look tired and dirty.


But inside you’ll see a tight grain (< 1 mm per ring) and an arc in the grain that means the boards came from a good-sized tree and could be 300 - 500 years old.


["GH style from newer lumber - not bad": photos by GAH]

I’ll cut a board into one inch strips, to test the quality (before painting 8 other GHs from Grade C lumber - thus the paint), but I’m certain they’ll make some of the finest GHs in all the land.


The two old deck boards were certainly worth rescuing.

***

As some faithful readers know, birdhouse money buys gas for my motorcycle. So rescuing lumber leads to rides in the country.

Is that a symbiotic relationship, of sorts?

.