Will Holman is a maker’s maker whose HOWTOs have graced Make, Instructables, Readymade and other hotbeds of DIY; his new book Guerilla Furniture Design is a beautifully written and inspiring design manifesto disguised as a project book,
Holman learned his craft while residing at Arcosanti, the utopian design-community in the Arizona desert that is meant to be a beta-version of an arcology.
By raiding the middens of an environmentally conscious experimental
community, he found the raw materials necessary to furnish his rooms and
workshop.
Guerilla Furniture Design is a project book, but it’s more than
that. It’s broken into four sections – paper, wood, plastic and metal
– and each one opens with a lay-friendly material science briefing that
explains the theory and practice of working with each material. This
theory is counterpointed with the projects that follow, which each build
on the skills acquired in the previous one.
Holman isn’t just a great writer and teacher, he’s a gifted designer.
The housewares in this book are, to a one, beautiful. Each one exploits,
rather than disguising, its humble origins, making a show of the fact
that it is built out of garbage pulled from a dumpster or rescued from a
curb.
Like all good project books, the point of these projects is to teach you
to make up your own, to transfer the skills needed to let your
imagination, your needs, and the material abundance of your immediately
neighborhood converge on things that make your home more beautiful and
livable.
Storey press was kind enough to give us my favorite of these projects, a
12-foot-long dining room table made from scrap lumber that I dream of
making myself someday.
Scrap Table
Nothing beats a gathering of friends around a big table, raucous with
laughter, food, and wine. Nothing brings a room of strangers together
like sitting at a community table on bench seating, elbows rubbing. The
Scrap Table is 12 feet of gathering goodness, made
of lots of tiny pieces laminated with glue and threaded rods. A trestle
base is laminated right into the top, making structure and surface
inseparable. All the variegated pieces, planed and sanded smooth, turn
the wood into petrified strata.
Materials
* Two 8-foot 2x6s
* Two 8-foot 2x8s
* Wood glue
* 1 pound 3" coarse-thread #8 drywall or deck screws
Steps
1. Cut the 2x6s into eight 48" blanks for the legs. Mark a diagonal line
from corner to corner of each leg piece, then cut each into two
triangles with the circular saw. You should end up with eight leg blanks
that are 5 ½" wide at one end and sharply pointed (0" wide) at the
other.
2. Miter the wide end of each leg to 15 degrees, making sure to register
the factory edge of each blank against the saw’s fence. Cut off as
little as possible to achieve the miter. Measuring from the freshly
mitered end, along the factory edge, cut each leg to length at 31", with
a 15-degree miter that’s parallel to the first. Ease all cut edges
lightly with a block plane or sanding block.
3. Measure up 8" from the thin (floor end) of each leg and drill a 1" hole, centered in the width of the piece.
4. Prepare the 2x8 trestle boards by making two marks along the bottom edge of each
board, 18" in from the ends. Then make a mark 2" down from the top at
the end of each board. Connect these two marks and cut with a circular
saw to create the taper, as shown at right. Ease all cut edges lightly
with a block plane or sanding block.
5. Align one leg on one trestle so that the wide end of the leg is flush
with the top of the trestle and the factory edge intersects the end of
the taper in the trestle, as shown at right. Glue and screw the pieces
with four 3" screws. Repeat to install the seven remaining legs,
creating two trestle assemblies.
6. Lay one trestle on the ground. Begin building up the tabletop by applying an even coat
of glue to a strip of wood and fasten it onto the trestle with 2 ½"
screws so the top of the strip is flush with the top of the trestle.
Continue in this fashion, building up strips of wood with glue and
screws. As you build up the strips, use a straightedge to check that the
top surface is remaining flush, flat, and square to the broad face of
the trestles. The intent of this design is to make a large table out of
otherwise wasted small scraps, so feel free to piece together tiny bits;
just make sure that each layer is made of a consistent thickness of
wood, and that the seams are well-glued and lapped from layer to layer.
Around the legs, miter the ends of the strips to match the angle of the
2x6s, locking the legs into the tabletop. Stop when you have built up
about 3" of strips on one side of each trestle.
7. Lay out five lines: one in the center, end-to-end; two each centered
on the legs; and at about 64" from each side of the centerline (this
will be about 8" in from the ends of a 12-foot table; adjust according
to your planned length). Drill holes at these lines with a ⅝" spade bit,
taking care to drill perfectly vertically. As you add layers to the
tabletop, you will continue to drill these holes, eventually creating
lines of holes for the threaded rods that penetrate through the whole
tabletop, as shown at left.
8. Continue building up one side of each trestle until you have 10" to
12" of strips, then flip the assembly and build up the other side about
5", continuing to drill holes for the threaded rods. Aim for a total
tabletop width of 30" to 34" (15" to 17" for each trestle assembly). Be
sure to keep the total width under 36" so the threaded rods will reach
all the way through.
9. Gather a group of friends to assemble the table. Push the five ½"
threaded rods through the five holes in one half of the top so the rods
stick out of the middle an inch or two. Coat the middle seam of both
halves of the tabletop with a mixture of standard wood glue and
polyurethane glue, making sure not to leave any dry spots.
I never noticed it before, but while Buster’s fishing through his pockets searching for Dorothy’s watch, you can see he’s wearing at least three different watches of his own – all the chains! Haha, no doubt a little Keaton touch…
Buster Keaton and Dorothy Sebastian in Allez-Oop (1934)
