Jack Moore - Product Designer

One day I went back to the timber yard where I sourced the wood for my coffee table as my own little wood store in the garage was starting to run low. I was going to see if I could pick up some more wood again, hopefully nice and cheaply to make some projects from. As I was wandering around the yard I found a lovely looking piece of wood with a deep reddish gold colour to it. The yard mainly sold oak for timber framed buildings but did have little odds and sods here and there.

 

After talking to the guy at the yard he told me that the piece was Sapele, an African equivalent of Mahogany. He’d no idea how much he’d want to charge for a large piece of it (roughly 7ft long and 3ft wide) however there was a small piece of it lying on the floor next to it (about 3ft long and 4 inches wide) which he said I was very welcome to take for free to play around with.

 

As I said in my door stop project I love finding pieces of wood like this. It’s the sort of item that most people see no point in. From their perspective there’s nothing of any real use that can be made from it. I get great satisfaction from trying to prove them wrong.

 

With this lovely bit of tropical African hardwood in my hands, I began thinking what I wanted to try and make from it. At the time I was in need of a bedside light in my room, so began looking for inspiration.

 

I found someone who’d modified a simple Ikea shelf bracket to make a light, but thought to myself that I could easily make a similar bracket. So I went on to do so using this piece of wood given to me for free.

 

I had to mill it up ready to be used, but whilst doing so I really brought the colour of the wood out. The build was relatively simple as was wiring the light.

 

So a simple project with minimal design process, but proof yet again that pieces of wood that in some peoples mind is just waste can be used to produce beautiful looking pieces of furniture and design.