Rustic Kitchen Bench
This is a rustic kitchen bench I made for a couple in June 2009. The piece is made from two old pieces of Oregon sourced from a salvage yard in Perth by a mate of mine 12 years ago. The pieces were each 4000 long by 450 wide and 50 thick. The oregon was used in an old Wool Shed in Melbourne. The kitchen bench was 1600 long by 950 high by 900 wide and the Oregon was 50mm thick.
The clients saw the wood and loved the aged look so asked me not to machine the pieces as the rustic aged effect would be lost. This made making the piece very challenging as they wanted through dovetails at each end and one of the boards was quite curved. I cut all of the dovetails and left them proud. So that the top was not touched I sanded them down and left them 1mm proud of the top surface. The effect was excellent. The piece also has 3 old railway spikes at each end and a steel shelf underneath.
The dovetails were cut straight from the saw and the finish was wax. As Oregon is quite soft I used a wire wheel on a drill to clean the wood and this also gave the wood a really rustic look.
Cutting the dovetails on such big, thick wood was difficult. I was standing on a step ladder to cut the top joinery.
The two pieces of Oregon had some nasty splits that I was concerned about so I inlaid 19 dovetail butterflies to a depth of 10mm to hold these and prevent them from opening any further. There is also a love heart inlaid into the top at the clients request.