Old furniture as a source of wood

[dennis thompson]

We had an old bed we were replacing. Instead of throwing the old one away I cut up the usable pieces and got 15 bd ft of mahogany out of it!:) During the first woodworking course I took the instructor said you should always stop and look at any furniture at the curb as a source of wood, I've never done it but I may start now. Anyone else ever use old furniture as a source of wood?

[Allan Speers]

I have several times. Lovely old mahogany, in fact. :)

Of course, if you want to work with really flat stock then you will rarely end up with usable 3/4", but lots of parts can be safely made out of 5/8".


The biggest problem is, most of what I gathered up ended up being lesser quality than I hoped, or outright unusable. So, a lot of time was wasted both collecting the stuff, milling it down, and then re-throwing it out. I'm not sure it was worth the trouble, overall.

[Randy Rose]

Always keep my bionic curb surfing eye well focused during my commute.

Nothing good yet.

[Doug Hobkirk]

Absolutely! Lots of maple and oak. Pre-finished plywood panels. Hardware.

[Wade Lippman]

I got some nice mahogany when the church where my son when to nursery school threw shelves out. (which I can now calculate as 18 years ago.:()
But I have never found any salvageable wood in discarded furniture.
I found some oak cabinet doors I thought might be useful, but burned them in my wood stove after 5 years.

I did find a really silly piece of exercise equipment I sold on ebay for $425 plus $350 shipping. That's gotta count because it paid for a lot of wood.

[Davis Young]

This wasn't fine furniture or
maybe even furniture but some years ago while my sister was doing her PhD at UCLA, someone in her lab building was throwing out wall mounted shelving including the KV hardware. It was all piled up on the loading dock next to the dumpsters, free for the taking. They were the KV085 double slotted 7' standards and 12" brackets, probably enough to do a 12' long wall. The shelves were 6' long maple ply with 12" x 6"x 3/4" solid maple doweled in on each end to act as book ends. The plywood I turned into a 6' x 6' bookcase. The solid maple became three knife blocks. And the KV hardware held my veneer stash for over a decade before I recently repurposed them for closet organizer hardware.

[Robert Engel]

I scored a 2X18X14 and 2X12X14 planks of hickory.
Was a pew from an old church they remodelled.

Don't know who got all the rest.

I also built a workbench out of a piece of bowling alley lane a buddy of mine was going to burn.

[glenn bradley]

Made some nice picture frames out of an old mahogany sleigh bed. I took one to the "contributor" as a thank you. Really knocked them for a loop as they always thought it was cherry ;-)

[Dick Strauss]

Not quite old furniture but my 3" thick workbench top was made from 3-10" wide x 3/4" oak trim that was removed from a house and salvaged by an older friend. The legs and stretchers are made of old barn beams from trees growing in the 1600's.

[Bill Adamsen]

I have a similar dilemma. I needed some Sitka spruce for a boom for a boat and a friend offered up several old but in fine condition wood masts that I could use to scavenge the material. I just couldn't do it. A fully rigged and in other ways perfect mast was simply too good of a thing (the history and emotive force) to scavenge. The situation might have been different if I thought they were otherwise going to be disposed of ... but in their workable state I could bring the saw to the wood.

If there were furniture I really thought was inferior I'd likely have no problem repurposing it. I can think of many times that I have.

[Joe Bradshaw]

My girlfriends daughter had a cherry china cabinet in her basement. Daughter was given a drop dead date to remove it or else. We took it apart and the cherry was of poor quality. I cut the pieces into strips and glued them together. I got a 12", a 6" bowl, a toothpick holder, a handle for a pizza cutter and a bottle stopper. It was wqy more work than the pieces were worth. B
Joeut, it sure was fun. The pieces will be given to the daughter and her 3 daughters for Christmas this year.

[Jon Nuckles]

I had a very nice cherry pencil post bed that no longer fit with our preferred style of furniture. I took it apart and planed down the headboard, footboard and rails. The wood was a bit of a disappointment: very fast grown and soft. I have used most of it for shop projects. Still have the pencil posts in hopes of finding a use, but they are taking up valuable space.