Mesquite Entertainment Center

[FC]

Took about 120 hours. Made from wood from my grandpa's and brother's mesquite trees, spalted maple from Omaha, and spalted cedar elm from south of Killeen, TX. The molding was really tough to do. Not perfect, but looks good on picture.

try the link again

[AzRednek]

Tony the link is bad, takes me to an advertisemnt for photo bucket.

[FC]

Thanks for telling me. Does it work now? Can't look at it at work.

[roscoedoh]

Dang Tony, that's some mighty fine handy work!

 

(BTW, its working.)

[ShooterTom]

Beautiful Work Tony. A nice way to think of Texas in your new home.

 

 

Tom

[cold shot]

All I can say Tony is....Holy Cow!!!!!! Beautiful work man. My wife saw it and says I could'nt put a box together even if it only had 1 side. Gorgeous work Tony. Dave

[FC]

That gave me a chuckle.

Thanks fellas. It's a relief to be done with it when I spent every spare moment for who knows how long putting it together. The fun thing is recalling they started out as trees we had cut into planks.

[swamp_thing]

Beautiful work Tony. I think that may well be your calling. Not many would build something with that detail and expertise.

[cold shot]

just a short note tony. Isn't it a good feeling when you make something yourself than just buying it?

That how I feel when I do my rifles. Anyway ya done yerself proud. Later Dave

[FC]

It's nice that it is wood that we had cut up ourselves and is now furniture. The problem with store-bought furniture is the poor quality. A store entertainment center is ordinarily laminated MDF (medium density fiberboard). It will not hold up over time. Mesquite is hard, pretty, and very stable wood.

[ken98k]

Very nic work.

120 hours doesn't seem like much to me, it would probably take me 120 days.

Where do you work on these types of projects? Do they have a hobby shop there on base?

Kenny

[FC]

I barely finished the structure in TX on the driveway before we left. I had to haul it out (bottom and top separate) to work on it, then roll it back on a dolly/roller when I couldn't see anymore. I put the doors on here. I had never put European hinges on before, but managed to get them figured out.

[donmarkey]

Nice work Tony! You need to put a picture of the trees on one of the shelves as a reminder .

-Don

 

[Ron J]

That's really sharp. I'm impressed with the detail and the patience to see a project like that through the end. Way to go, Sir.

[z1r]

Superb Tony. I bet it weighs a ton.

[FC]

It's pretty heavy, and I knew it would be, so I cut the thickness of the mesquite down to about 5/8 inch. At least the top lifts off. The way the original designer made it was to make 3 boxes on a frame, and three boxes on top. I got to use up leftover wood, like pine and castoff plywood, which is always nice. It cut down on the weight somewhat too.

 

To make the spalted maple, I carried off wood that was destined for an immense shredder. I gathered up peoples' lawn refuse bags in the fall (got kind of a reputation for that), and buried the maple under this big compost pile for two or three years. I then ran the boards through my large bandsaw. In the end maybe 25% of the logs ended up spalted (fungal effect) well enough to make it through processing as the finished product. There's just tremendous waste going from log to cutting, to the planer, joiner, sizing, then cutting, and sanding. The spalted cedar elm came off the side of a highway widening project in central TX. It's sort of like cutting a geode and seeing what is inside.

 

Mesquite has lots of waste thanks to the smaller size of the trees, lots of defects, and the twisted nature of the trees. Hit some darned barbed wire in one of the logs a couple of times. Making black epoxy to fill voids was expensive and time consuming. That epoxy got so hot while the chemical reaction was happening that if I hadn't been wearing latex gloves I would have gotten badly burned. If you don't get the ratios right you end up with nasty goo that never sets. That isn't so good on your tools.