26/5/2015

It is my lucky day. I managed to secure a deal for some reclaimed pine in massive dimensions (given what is generally available in Namibia) from a friend in the building trade. The deal goes like this: I need to build him a huge table that can be disassembled from some of the timber and the rest of it is mine.

The timber was used to build a container for a massive machine that weighed more than 5 tons to transport it from Germany to Namibia. In the picture below I am referring to the stuff at the bottom.

There are about ten piece of 200 mm (8″) x 75 mm (3″) x 3200 mm (10½), a few that measure 130 mm (5¼”) x 110 (>4″) x 3200 mm (10½’), and 5 or so of 150 mm (6″) x 130 mm (5¼”) x 5000 mm (16′). It is next to impossible to find solid wood in these dimensions in the Land of the Brave.

If you look at the year rings, it is clearly quality stuff. The pine we can buy around here has year rings as wide as the Benguela sea current that grace our Skeleton Coast. These trees must have grown in quite harsh conditions (I am guessing) in the Northern Hemisphere.

Unfortunately this means that I will not be able to do the chair build with Brian Eve in June. I hope he will understand my situation. He has suggested that a few bloggers build a chair together and compare notes via his website. I still think it is a wonderful idea and will certainly join something like that in future, but cannot let this opportunity slip either. Sorry Brian!