One man's trash.... Confessions of a Skip Diver.

I need wood.

But there is a problem, I'm skint. I needed some wood to finish one of my chairs and managed to pick up a pallet from my local council run tip and found an interesting fact.

If you want to get a piece of wood or pallet from a skip the rules are:

"If you can get it without climbing into the skip, you can have it. But you can't go in the skip." Apparently Health and Safety forbid the fine art of skip diving.

So after a few minutes grunting and cussing I had the pallet in the back of the car and was home with some free wood.

Once home, it was time to break out my to most favourite tools, my crowbar and my axe, here they are all sharpe and ready for action.

 The crowbar is an underrated tool, in skilled hands it can separate bits of wood, be flipped around and used to knock nails through before skilfully removing a nail and leaving a clean piece of timber. 

Removing the large square blocks at the base proved a problem. I tried prizing with the crow but the wood split and was lost. I then tried to separate the blocks by forcing in a chisel, this didn't work. In the end it was time for the axe. Placing the block on my oak stump I used the small axe to split the block along the grain to reveal the nails holding the block. A flick of the wrist and the back of the axe was used to knock through the nails enough to be popped out by the crowbar. 

So after an hour of sweat and muscle ripping toil I had 14 metres of 110mm x 25mm timber. Sure there were a few extra holes and hammer dents than one would like, it was free, but I like to think of the ultimate in recycling.  

The Original Coffee Table

Whilst living in Amsterdam a lifetime ago I was working for a, shall we say, "shady character" in the property market as a hired hand. As well as "liaising" with unwanted tenants I sometimes had to help clear out the furniture of a newly acquired property in the centre of town and on this day amongst all the nick-nacks and soft furnishings of the recently departed I came across, what I like to call, the original coffee table.
It was round, about 6ft across, and sat on three 2in thick angled legs about a foot from the floor and the dark wood was a good 2in thick all-round. But what made this unique was the centre.
Sat in a 18in hole was a brass dish, on which a lid of embossed brass which had 6 or so small dish shapes around the rim which took matching cups, some larger dents in the middle took a large coffee pot. Apparently the dish was filled with hot coals from the fire which kept the coffee of the chatting bohemians nice and warm as they philosophised into the small hours.
It was a simple peace and I wish I could have kept it and not thrown it into the skip, but as I said this was a life time away. Perhaps I could re create the table with a modern twist, maybe a John T Unger Firebowl in the middle.
Time will tell.

Mini Golf Star City Birmingham

Today we all went to Star City in Birmingham to play Mini Golf.
It was ok, but where was the windmill, the tubes and pipework,
there is only so much you can do with lumps and bumps.
I might just have to design my own Crazy Golf!
Keep watching for updates.