Wood - part I

I am building an outdoor bar from Oregon pine. This timber is from Oregon, as the name suggests. However it is not pine. It is also known as Douglas Fir, but it is not fir either. It is actually from a separate genus called Pseudotsuga, which means ‘false Hemlock’, a genus which it botanically resembles, but is not.

I am a non-smoker. That suggests I do not smoke, which has been true for a week, but does feel a bit like a false hemlock because I have been smoking for the past 25 years. Every time I have tried to give up smoking I have failed. It usually falls apart in the first week, at the point where I want to eat my own arms off. This time is different though – this time I am on the journey with my best friend, Adam. Also, I have decided to make things out of wood until I don’t want to smoke anymore.

Adam and I have been talking about building a bar across our back verandah for some time.  We both independently dreamt up this feature – I thought it would be a good place for people to put their drinks when they come over (we rarely have people over because we don’t know many people, but maybe it will encourage us to meet new people so we can invite them over), and Adam thought it would be a handy place to rest his computer and coffee on, when he feels like some outside writing time.

I informed Adam that I wanted to build this bar myself – for a couple of reasons. The first being that everything that has been built from wood in this house has been built by Adam. This is not surprising as he is the house builder, the set builder, the artist, and the expert on all things woodwork. However, when people come over and admire our trestle table made from recycled floor boards, or the hat stand fashioned from wattle branches, I say,

‘We made that..’

I’m not sure why I do that – it’s not true. I probably just drank wine in the sun while Adam sanded. So I usually follow that comment with,

‘Actually, Adam made it, I drank wine.’

I would like to make a legitimate claim to these lovely things made of wood.

The other reason is that I need something to focus my mind and hands on, so I don’t drift off and picture how much better my life would be if I was still smoking – smoking in the Spring sunshine, in my brand new kini, while I drink a Spanish vermouth on ice, and spray Adam with the hose when he’s not expecting it, then both of us laughing at how wonderful life is, while we smoke.

Adam said I was welcome to build the bar by myself and that he would happily sit on the day bed and get drunk and just tell me what to do from there. It won’t go like that, obviously, because I have no idea what I’m doing and I need him to tutor me every step of the way. Also, I figure Adam won’t mind being my teacher and mentor, because he also needs to keep focused – and he loves me.

We talked through the design of our bar and decided it would extend from the supporting roof post, halfway across the verandah, and be held up at the other end by a single post from the ground. By doing this, we are compromising the stability a little bit, so as not to obstruct our view out to the shed and the hills hoist.

We were going to assemble a trial bar with some shit wood Adam has in the shed, so we could spend some time with it – so we could be sure about the height and design before we started, but we don’t have the time and we’re not building a fucking Utzon in Majorca-ville, so we decided to get straight into the real bar.

Adam has a few sources for his building materials – the street, other people’s reno chuck outs, and GHG Home and Building Recycling in Preston. The renos around our streets are almost finished now, and the council chuck out was cleared by scavengers well before the council could collect it, so we headed out to GHG.

I love this place. I could spend all day in their enormous shed, picking through old house parts, imagining how they will all fit together in the home that we’re going to build on our very own bush block, off the grid, next to a little stream where dogs frolic, when we win the lottery.

I always spend a good amount of time in the fireplace facade section. I would like to put a fireplace on the side of our shed and put pot plants on the mantel, where folks once rested their shiraz while they talked about books.

This week, we also found a pedal driven organ, so Adam pumped the pedals while I played minor chord arpeggios. It sounded like we were in a horror movie.

When it comes to wood, I have no idea what I’m looking at so I agreed when Adam pulled a plank out and said how about this one. It was a 2.4m long and scruffy looking thing – it had wood hairs growing out of it, nail holes and some divots and knots, and it was a bit orange – but it was a thick and solid piece of wood, and I liked it. It was $60, which seemed a lot for a hairy plank of second hand wood, but the sun was shining and I just wanted to get started.

Adam took my request to make this bar by myself seriously. He ‘let’ me carry the plank to the counter, pay for it, and manoeuvre it into the back of the ute. Some people who noticed my tiny frame and Adam’s enormous body looked on in shock and disgust. Adam let me drive home and then watched me drag the plank from the ute to our back yard.

Apparently, as a recent smoker, I have many receptors in my brain that are used to being stimulated by nicotine. Now there is no more nicotine, they have nothing to hold onto, so they are ricocheting off the walls of my head. My brain is free-balling.

I filled up the dog’s water bowl and put it in the fridge, while Adam prepared the sanding machines. 

The belt sander drives a powerful belt covered in a strip of rough paper that could take all the skin from your arms in a second. I pictured that for a minute and then wiped it from my mind. I was surprised by the power of it as I lowered it onto my new plank and it took off without me. I said God! Did you see that! and Adam said This is going to be a long day, and we both laughed. I think Adam laughed, he was facing the other way.

The yellow hair on the plank was a disguise, like a wig on a person. Once it was gone, I could see the true colours in the timber. It was blonde and yellow, its grain marked in a dark brown, running in continuous lines down the length, veering left and right around the knots; an indelible history of growth. I wondered what events made the grain move like that, what organism created that hole and sent it off its straight path and into a spin?

Some of the imperfections and splintery sections were too awkward for the belt, so Adam showed me how to get into those niggly bits with an angle grinder and an orbital sander (google it). At first I was worried about taking chunks out of my plank and hands, but as the caverns and dips appeared in the wood, it started to take on its own personality. It was no longer a generic lumberer’s cut, it was becoming my own unique handiwork. I was liberating it from its prison of right angles! Then I sanded my creation with a very fine sandpaper until it felt like silk. I ran my hands up and down the beautiful plank, until a large splinter got lodged under my fingernail. Adam pulled it out with tweezers. His splinter was deep inside his finger, so he used a needle to dig his out with.

Then Adam showed me how to seal the wood with Tung oil.

‘Nice and smooth. Don’t let it drip and don’t get it on your hands’  he said.

The wood blushed and shone. It was beautiful, and I was happy to stare at it for a while. In the meantime, Adam had sanded and oiled a piece of hard wood that we will use to hold the bar up. Then he went out into the world to do some jobs. He said,

‘Let that oil dry for twelve hours, then we’ll re-sand and do another coat.’

And he left me in the house, alone. No cigarettes. No Company.

I had to get some washing on the line so I mixed yoghurt with some old strawberries and a splash of rum and popped it into the freezer. Adam loves desert! I hung half the washing out but then I noticed how long the grass was so I mowed around the hills hoist, which reminded me that the washing was only half hung out. The plank looked like it had completely dried, so I thought I would surprise Adam by doing another coat of Tung oil. I googled Oregon pine, and then found a great online journal called The Wood Review. I started to draw up a plan for some articles I could write, that they might be interested in paying me for, but all that Tung oil was making my fingers stick together.  It started to feel like super glue and was making my hands red and swollen. I texted Adam to ask how I should get the oil off my hands and he said ‘don’t get it on your hands’ and I texted back ‘der’ and then googled the question and got it off with olive oil.

Adam returned. I was relieved and exhausted.

‘Sweetheart! I did another layer of oil!’

‘Did you sand the scratch marks off before you did another coat?’

‘…no?’

‘So the scratches are sealed in now?’

‘Yes.’

‘So I did say you should wait for twelve hours before you do another coat, so it dries properly.’

‘Yes. But it looked dry!’

‘But it needs twelve hours to dry properly.’

‘Ahhhh…’

‘Shall we pack it up for the day?’

‘Yes.’