Design, Garden/Furniture

Table of Scraps

Making use of left-overs
 
When I finished building the truss chair and bench (see previous postings below) I had a small stack of left-over pieces. I try to minimize waste, but there’s always some pieces that are too short to use. In this case I had redwood 2×6’s of varying lengths from 11″ to 23″. They were stacked up on my work bench and getting in the way, but I can’t stand to throw anything out.

Lisa needed a table for 2 flats of little succulents (flats are about 17″ square). The table would stand on an existing low plant shelf and support the flats above the plants. It occurred to me that I could use the wood scraps to build the table.

I cut the 2×6’s into 4 pieces lengthwise. This gave me four 1-1/2″ x 1-1/4″ pieces from each scrap. This worked well, because tables have four legs, and pieces are needed in multiples of 2 or 4.

The table is higher and wider than my longest scrap, so I spliced shorter pieces together. The sixth photo shows a splice where the supports and diagonal braces come together. By overlapping pieces where they connect, nothing has to fit precisely. I didn’t cut the length of any of the pieces, I just let the ends project out.

I used up most of my 2×6 scraps. Maybe I should design my next chair so there are no scraps.

Construction drawings. Notes helped me keep track of which scraps went where.

Photographs of the finished table: front, side, rear corner, rear, details

Photograph of the table in its natural habitat, our potting shed.