The Pheonix

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I’ve been chipping away at my stock of thrift store redwood (literally all purchased at a thrift store). I had two large left over pieces that I have been trying to sell, to no avail, on craigslist. The one slab is good for a small coffee table, has some nice figure and was surfaced flat on one side. Started at $120, worked down to $80 and had marginal interest but mostly from people wanting to offer $60.

I couldn’t justify letting it go that cheap, especially since with minimal work I could finish it and get a better premium. I did offer each low baller the second left over slab.

Heavily weathered, burned and while hard to tell from the pictures had a funny waffled shape; both sides were convex. I tend to think I am good at visualizing how much something can yield and I thought at most I could level out the lip of each side, throw a glass top on and call it ‘rustic’.

No one would take me up on the $60 offer.

I woke up on Saturday with a motivation bug pulled out the router sled and set about flattening the bottom of the coffee table I was trying to sell. With that flattened I figured I’d tackle this slab; Perhaps with it flat I’d have better luck selling it.

To my surprise, the yield was much better than I anticipated, and there was incredibly tight grain (30+ per inch in areas) with hint’s of figure.

Hints would be a slight understatement; a coat of Minwax’s ‘Natural’ stain, really helped the figure pop.

Like the mythological Phoenix the piece has literally risen from the ashes. This just moved from the sale pile to the keep pile. I’ll probably use it as the top for the root base I recently finished

I am sure there are a handful of people that may read this and be kicking themselves for passing it up.

Source: LumberJocks.com

The Pheonix