Hobby: Scrap Wood Carpentry

I am serious about mathematical research and teaching and have won some (minor) awards in the field. However, I equally enjoy the many hobbies that I have at which I have no particular skill. Maybe I would be brilliant at them if I just spent the time :-) One that has resurfaced recently is Scrap Wood Carpentry. If you live long enough or scavenge around your neighborhood for things that people throw away (in North America anyway), you can amass a collection of scrap wood (lumber). Houses are knocked down with perfectly good lumber (or well, lumber with some little life left in it) discarded. You can pick that stuff up and build something good from it!

For me, it all started in our last rental (which my father and step-mother refer to as "that hole"). Our children spent their years 7-10 and 5-8 there. There was a strange and often drunken handyman employed by the landlady who had left an immense pile of scrap wood at the place. Actually the landlady was a good experience: not falsely friendly but matter of fact and professional. The one advantage of "the hole" was that we had sole access to the back yard, which was somewhat low ground and swampy. There was a blackberry patch in the back yard from which I learned the valuable lesson that humans and blackberries cannot co-exist. Anyway, from the pile of crap wood I determined to build a playhouse (fort) and a treehouse in the backyard for the kids. I have pictures of these archived somewhere but will need to get home and scan them in to be able to post them. The fort became known as "the Swamp Hut" and saw little use since it was so spider infested. The tree house, just a platform but above the swamp and not so prone to collect spiders, saw more action. There was so much scrap wood that I also build some outdoor tables and also a spice rack, shown in the foreground below. This is vintage 1993, built entirely of scrap and at no cost to us.

This brings us to modern times. In the background above is shown a second spice rack I built recently out of scrap wood here at our new home on East Fourth Ave (new as of 8 years ago). There were some improvements, namely the Dado joints for the shelves. This was also done at no cost - well, there was the $150 for the router and bits. I guess this is the price of progress. 

Late in 2011 I also built some heavy shelving of scrap wood for the garage, pictured below. This was made of 2x4's and boards from the fort I made for the kids at this place (of purchased wood - gasp - but not enclosed so few spider problems). Note the close-up of the joints - butt and lap joints, some of the poorest joints you can use I learned later (d'oh). Still, because of the materials I used, these shelves will last forever and could support an elephant. What I do use them for - is to store my scrap wood collection, of course!

Coming up next: What am I doing in Hawaii? or the Golden Geek Awards 2011.