A recent shift in my shop space created a gap for a table, a drying rack, a slop-sink mop-sink utility-sink off-loading silk-screen supply platform if you will.
I could go to the store and buy some new fasteners. I could find the exact match online and buy two of them. I could give a shit about color coordination. I could get a brand new table, in just the right size at IKEA and it would off-gas its particle board odors for 5 to 7 years. Fuck that.
What truly brings me joy is finding old seemingly incompatible shit that’s been sitting around in the garage for years and slapping it together to create something new. Something new to me. Some people call that In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU)
I call it taking it out of context and putting it back in.
On this project there was no measuring, no calculation, no trips to the hardware store and no out-of-pocket expenses. This project cost a total of zero dollars because it was all just sitting in the garage collecting dust.
A few years ago I found a Lyon stool in a to-be-tossed pile. It was missing a couple of spacers at the base of two legs, so it was a little ricky-rocky. But a washer solved that problem.
Lyon Stools are steel and bombproof. Old school like your Junior High shop teacher. They used to be made in Aurora, IL. I’m not sure if that’s still the case. However, there is no doubt in my mind that this particular stool was made in the USA some time in the last 75 years.
The loss of paint, rust, battle scars and duct tape residue clearly illustrate the life that this stool led in chemistry labs for years and years at UW before it was kicked to the curb. Which is where I spotted it and adopted it and offered it another life in a quiet, less toxic space.
A few months ago I found a nice sturdy piece of plywood in a loading dock scrap pile. 24” x 16” x ⅝” = solid. A real keeper.
Yesterday, all the scraps came together.
I rounded off the edges of the plywood, sprayed painted a crow stencil (from Bret in ABQ) and silkscreened on a few lines of elevator conversation. Then I slathered it all in six layers of polyurethane.
Now it’s a table, it’s a stool, it’s a silk-screen supply platform drying rack. Nobody has one of these, except me.
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