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Woodworker: Al Garbutt

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The bunkbeds are made of hard maple, maple plywood, and ash dowels. The finish is garnet shellac, sprayed on, maybe 8 coats total. I built them without the benefit of a plan, just a picture from a furniture store catalog. It took approx. 2 months to build them and a week or so to apply the finish. I really did not realize how difficult it would be to bore all the dowel holes in the arched pieces, taking most of a weekend to get them done. The boys really like them and unlike a pine bed, these don't wiggle

 

Corner hutch (left) is pine and maple. A gift for an aunt who was furnishing her summer home at the shore. Custom made to fit in a little corner of her kitchen

The chimney cabinet (right) was the first piece of furniture I built for money. A Christmas gift for a friend's wife and is all knotty pine. It is a reproduction of a cabinet I saw in an antique store. It took me 2 weeks of nights to build and then my son tried to help me fill the nail holes. It took another week to refinish after he rubbed through the stain with his fingernail. Live and learn.

 

 

 

A Blanket Chest

 

 

 

 

 

Don't show your wives this floor, they will want one too.

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a pic of a dining room table that I put together for the wife. It is made of yellow pine. The top was made from wood that I found in town. It was being used for a floor in a attic. The boards were 22 inches wide and 24 feet long. The legs came from beams that were taken from a feed mill that was being dismantled. The finish is Minwax Red Oak stain, and then antique pine gel stain. The chairs are a matched set of six that we had stripped. Then I dismantled them and reglued all the joints. The gel stain was used as a finish. They date from the late part of the 1800's and were all hand made.