Barn Wood Coffee Table

[bandit571]

Barn Wood...

   
Detail of the lid...

   

Lumber..

   
Resawn from barn rafters....

[BaileyNo5]

Nice stuff, bandit.  Must have been a fancy barn, that lid looks like white oak.  Out here, the barns are all pine or spruce, doug fir if you are lucky.

[bandit571]

Rafters were white oak. some of the joists were Cherry..
...6 x 6 beams were sycamore......old carriage house that was turned into a garage....that fell down a few years back.....siding was T&G Doug. Fir........owner asked IF I wanted any of the wood.
...they didn't say anything about all the cut nails I had to remove..

[BaileyNo5]

Working on the top now.  I had one board with live edges that was 20" wide on one end......and 12" wide on the other.  It wasn't big enough to use as a slab top, but it gave me some ideas.  I decided to use the narrow end.



Cut it to rough length, then ripped it down the middle.  These will be placed on either side, resulting in a live edge on both sides.  Then fill in the middle with a couple of regular straight edge boards.  Here's a mock-up.  Still need to get final approval from the boss on this, she may not like those irregular colors.  But hey it's barn wood, you get what you get.

[hbmcc]

Cool Top! Do you intend to bread board it? Don't need to, but they look cleaner. Just might be troublesome with live edges.

[KingwoodFan1989]

Lots of character there! And nice thinking when only flattening one face of those boards and gluing them together. As much as I hate the thought of not being able to S4S the boards, the color is really nice! 

[BaileyNo5]

Cool Top! Do you intend to bread board it? Don't need to, but they look cleaner. Just might be troublesome with live edges.

Thanks Bruce.  No breadboarding this time.  I like the look but won't work on this one.  I know some will be offended by this, but I am seriously thinking about just nailing the individual top boards to the base.  Feedback, criticism, and "You're Nuts!" comments welcome.  There might also be the odd (gasp!) shim here and there between the top and the base.  Might add some oak buttons on bottom to as reinforcement.

First I thought I would glue it up, but the boards are quite uneven.  And no planing/smoothing on show surfaces, remember?  I ran them through the planer (only the bottom side) to get them to equal thickness.  But the top sides are still a bit uneven, and gluing them together accentuates the uneven-ness.  I'm jointing the edges with my No. 6 to get a relatively decent fit.  But there will be ever so slight cracks, by design, in the top.

[hbmcc]

Your final connections sound fine, given the constraints. 

The only thing that nags me is continued maintenance. You might also get some shine and polish on surfaces eventually, but at what cost? Keep tweezers for the splinters on the top? What about smoothing down the ridges and experimenting with rubbed finishes (burnishing, too?) and wax?

Silvered weathering is the hardest thing to save, since it is little more than microscopic splintering of surface fibers.

[BaileyNo5]

Your final connections sound fine, given the constraints. 

The only thing that nags me is continued maintenance. You might also get some shine and polish on surfaces eventually, but at what cost? Keep tweezers for the splinters on the top? What about smoothing down the ridges and experimenting with rubbed finishes (burnishing, too?) and wax?

Silvered weathering is the hardest thing to save, since it is little more than microscopic splintering of surface fibers.

Interesting, as we were just discussing these very things.  Small children and splinters are a concern.  We talked about multiple ways to protect the weathering and minimize splinters, but ultimately did not come up with anything satisfactory (that preserved the weathering).  In the end we decided to leave it natural for now, and see how it wears over time.  We recognize the potential for a future appointment with Mr. Sander.  At that point we'll consider other finishes.

[BaileyNo5]

Well, I've gone and done it.  I've nailed imperfection.  
  The top, such as it is, is nailed in place.  Quite solid, too.



This is about as rustic as it gets.  Then, at the very end, I had to go and ruin the ambiance by trimming the top with a Festool track saw......go figure.