On paper this was a basic job: clean up two old blocks of wood, bolt them together and, hey, we’ve got a compact timber side table or stool. In reality, it was an incredibly complicated and time-consuming project that tested our power tool skills and our patience.
Salvaging railway sleepers and spikes
About 18 months ago we liberated a couple of broken railway sleepers and some metal rail spikes from a giant rubbish pile at a nearby railway siding. River red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) is a superb timber, incredibly dense and durable, with colours that vary from pink to deep red.
Each piece was about 70 cm long but the only workable length we could salvage was 38 cm. This was never going to be fine furniture; that wasn’t the point. As the cliché goes, sometimes it’s more about the journey than the destination. Along the way we learned new tricks for using our table saw, vertical drill press, hand drill, electric planer, router, electric sander and angle grinder.
Cutting and dressing the timber
Using a jig for cross cuts
Apparently the best way to trim railway sleepers is with a chainsaw or a dedicated sleeper saw. Yeah but no. We proved you can rip and cross-cut just about anything with a basic table saw if you take it slowly and methodically and you have a nifty home-made plywood cross-cut jig.
There were two main gotchas in our plan: (1) Each block was about 11 cm thick and 23 cm wide but the table saw blade only cuts to a maximum of depth of 7 cm. (2) Both bits of timber had no dead flat surfaces, which meant we were never quite sure if the cuts would lead to nice 90 degree angles. (What we really needed was a big thicknesser to create one perfectly flat surface to start with!)
Ripping the wide sides in two passes before planing
We ripped each surface in two passes: cut one edge then flipped the timber 180 degrees and cut the other edge. We cleaned up any remaining strips using a hand-held electric planer.
Overall, both blocks of wood ended up mostly square and smooth, which was more than good enough for this project.
Patching one corner
Chunk of wood missing from top corner
The corner of one block had a chunk missing. We cleaned up the area with a 45 degree cut on the table saw, cut a small piece of timber to fit, glued it on and then planed it flush.
Cutting hand grips
The blocks are heavy – together they weigh maybe 15 kg or more. Crazy. Without making handles there’d be no easy way to lift the final thing. We used a 30 mm Forstner bit to cut the rounded ends of the recesses then used the router to remove the rest. To cover the rough look we scrounged a very unattractive copper wall plaque from the Waverley Antique Bazaar to cut little plates that we glued in with a silicone adhesive.
Drilling the bolt holes and joining the blocks
This was such stressful work.
- We needed to join the blocks using carriage bolts.
- The holes had to be countersunk using a 20 mm Forstner bit.
- The holes in one block had to line up perfectly with those in the other block, despite the blocks not being perfectly square.
- The 10 mm drill bit wasn’t long enough to drill all the way through from one side of each block.
- The vertical drill press didn’t have the horizontal clearance to drill the central hole at the top of each block so these had to be done with a hand-held drill.
- The bolts we bought were ideal until – after drilling the holes – we realised we had no way to tighten the bolts because the diameter of the countersunk holes wasn’t big enough to take the required socket. We needed to replace them with slimmer bolts.
Incredibly, the holes lined up perfectly and we only needed to do some minor re-drilling to make it all bolt-up properly.
Cleaning and cutting the spikes
We thought it was apt to cap the bolt holes with railway spikes.
We cleaned up the rust with a wire brush drill bit. And we cut them to length with our gigantic angle grinder. To be honest I just took the photos. I stay well-away from that thing.
Finishing it all off
There’s not too much to say about the sanding and oiling job; just my usual methods. Although I did kill our orbital sander and we had to buy a new one.
The cut-off spikes got tapped in with a rubber mallet. They’re quite firmly wedged, without needing any glue to hold them.
Third bit from the right 
Great piece of work you 2. If you’re looking for a second home for the ‘table’ I’ll be over! xxx
You’d have to bring a forklift truck with you!
I love the finished piece. You two are artists.
Great how-we-did-it story.
Thanks, MAG. This was a real team effort, though my role was more project director and head assistant than power tool ninja (apart from using the sander).