This was a particularly fun project to build. I had been thinking about using cedar in creative ways ever since I was involved in splitting the shakes for our local music festival stage. There are very few woods that split as evenly as Western red cedar does. It has been used for thousands of years by the first nations people of the North-West Coast area for a myriad of uses because of this quality. After helping to place almost a truck-load of split cedar in the form of shakes on top of our stage, I thought it was time to use it in a way that can be more easily appreciated...not that having a good, sound roof is not appreciated, we all like that...but appreciated from a more tactile and visual point of view. And so, here is what I came up with...
I wanted to make this entirely out of wood that was from this area, and so used white birch for the rails and legs and red cedar for the panels.
This curved rail on the sides was a really fun part to make, and it adds alot to the overall feel of the piece.
For a change I went with leather as a handle (and also as lid stays). It suits the piece from my perspective...
