Rustic Furniture

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Softwoods including the excellent furniture trees, red and white cedar grow in groves in their prime territory but are scattered through felds, fence lines, and more mature woodlands elsewhere. Country roadsides are often excellent sources, as road crews and linemen clear them out periodically, and if you get there before the chipper, you'll find your furniture stock laid out in windrows at the roadside, ready to pick up. Citydwellers can follow the work of landscapers, town road crews, and tree surgeons.

Long whippy branches or young shoots of willow trees go into the gracefully curved arms and backs of bentwillow furniture. They grow along streams and marshes. Most excellent willow whipsless than an inch through at the base, ten feet or longer without any significant branches-are found on stumps of just-cut trees regrowing along roadside ditches. If you like bunted furniture, you can cut young trees about a foot above the ground and they will produce a cope or coppice of beautifully supple shoots every few years. Cut all you want; it is hard to kill a well-rooted willow. Whips from pussy willow (a shrub) and weeping willow are not as uniform as black willow but will do if you use their irregularities skillfully.

Odd burls, snags, roots, bird and hornet nests that are the difference between a merely interesting and a unique item of twig furniture are rare discoveries from walks in the woods. And driftwood requires a walk or boat ride along a river or an ocean or major lake shore.

The best time to harvest sticks to be used bark-on is in late fall/early winterafter hard frost in October till the end of January here in New England. Trees are dormant and as dry as they'll get naturally. Harvest during early spring for sticks to be debarked. Fresh with rising sap, bark will peel off in sheets or strips from late February to early June depending on species and locale. Later in the year, you'll have to chip or whittle it off.

Kept under shelter, but outside, wood dries to an atmospheric moisture content of 20°% at the rate of about one inch of thickness per year. To accelerate drying of sticks, harvest during the growing season, in midsummer when trees have mature leaves. Fell or girdle (remove all bark in an inch-wide band all around) trees and leave them in the woods till the leaves have pulled as much water from the wood as they are able. When leaves are dry, prune off limbs and bring the sticks home for further drying.

Do not glean deadwood unless it is a marvelous knot or snag you absolutely cannot pass up-you are asking for bugs. You needn't worry about importing a few worker-carpenter ants or termites; nests and egg-bearing queens are below ground. But nature devised bark beetles and powder-post beetles to grind cellulose small enough that molds and bacteria can consume it, and those bugs can easily spread to other sticks in your supply Pinholes in and tunnel marks under bark and little mounds of dark frass or lighter colored sawdust betray bug activity. Use the stick for kindling or fumigate it by enclosing in a black plastic bag with moth crystals and leaving it noonday sun for a few days. Heating smaller sticks in the oven at 220° overnight will kill any bug; open the door a crack to let moisture escape.

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