Another pile of wood has become a table. This is what I like about my retirement hobby. I can take something as non-descript as a stack of dirty, rough sawn boards and turn them into something useful.

The possibilities are endless. Sometimes the wood becomes just a small keepsake box. At other times a few boards gathering dust in my shop might serve a greater purpose. Once upon a time I made an end table for the lamp beside the couch on my porch.

I mostly do practical, utilitarian, and simple stuff. I am not Norm from the New Yankee Workshop. I do good enough work, and sometimes decent work when I put my mind to it.

The craziest thing I’ve ever done, and you know this already, is to build a casket for my very good friend Wayne. His daughter told me that Wayne had always intended to make his own box. He was a man of simple pleasures and unpretentious pursuits. Cancer kept him from making good on his intentions.

So, when his daughter asked me to make the casket in his honor, I couldn’t say no. And you might know that I had an old dusty pile of boards over in the corner of my shop that had been waiting for just the right opportunity.

Machines hummed and roared. Elbows went flying. Mounds of sawdust were made. And those boards, which had lived previously as wall paneling in the basement of a church fellowship hall, became a sacred box in the hands of the men who carried Wayne to his final rest. I was one of them.

What in the world does all this have to do with a table? Glad you asked.

The connection is once again Wayne.

They say that when a man dies, he leaves some sort of legacy behind. Traditions that carry on in the family. Old sayings, that when you use them, everyone knows exactly who you’re talking about. A man leaves behind his wisdom, his laughter, his love for life, and his old shirts.

Wayne also left behind a massive amount of rough sawn lumber. He had a rack the size of a 42 Chevy inside his shop. He had a rack under the overhang behind the shop. There was even a pile stacked between two oaks in the woods beside the shop, covered in scrap tin, held down against the wind by rocks and cinder blocks.

Wayne didn’t go for your everyday timber. He could buy fir or spruce at the box store, basic construction lumber. Wayne’s interest tended more toward fine cabinets and furniture pieces. He saw opportunity knocking, which is why he went after all the cedar, pecan, and walnut he could find. All of it came from trees that he cut himself with a chainsaw and then had someone with a bandsaw mill make boards out of it for him.

He never kiln-dried any of it. He probably should have. But he was meticulous about racking each layer as he stacked his piles, allowing for airflow. He kept them dry from the weather. He gave his wood the best chance he could of surviving until another day.

God bless him. His day to use that wood never came. He stayed too busy taking care of others to put much of a priority on his own dreams. So, when he passed over two years ago, his lumber piles remained exactly as they had been the day he stacked them over 25 years ago.

“I’ve got a favor to ask.”

It was Rachel, Wayne’s oldest, calling me with a dream of her own.

“You know that stack of wood in Dad’s shop?”

I’ve only walked around it a hundred times.

“I sure do.”

“Well some of that wood is walnut. Did you know that?”

“Yep. I remember when he cut the tree right after WWII.”

“I don’t want to ask too much. But Dad and I always talked about making a dining room table out of that walnut, and I was wondering if you would mind going over there and taking a look at it to see if it’s still any good.”

“I’d be glad to look at it for you.”

The hook was set. She continued.

“And if it’s okay, I mean, in good enough shape, do you think you would mind making me a dining room table out of it?”

Hoo Boy! I got nervous. I’m certain I fidgeted in silence for a few moments before answering.

“I’d be honored,” I said.

It took me a couple of months to get with Debbie and go over to his shop. Once I got there and started digging and sorting through the pile where the walnut was supposed to be, it turned out that most of lumber in the stack was cedar. But we finally managed to identify and drag out all the walnut we could find.

“Hmm!”

I’m standing there with my hands on my hips. I reached up to scratch my chin and wiped away a cobweb from the brim of my cap.

“I’m not sure this is enough for a dining room table.”

Debbie helped me load it into the back of my truck. I drove the three minutes to my shop, set up some sawhorses, and unloaded my project.

The wood sat there for months. It kept talking to me, but I was ignoring it. The boards were bowed and cupped. The ends were split. The color was just a dirty brown. Saw marks marred every surface. I kept calculating how much I couldn’t use and kept coming up short. In my mind, there was going to be more waste than table in that pile of wood.

I stewed on it for almost a year. I had plenty of other projects going. Then one day I decided to run a few pieces through the planer and see what might be under all that dust and dirt.

Shazam! I was bowled over. If you know anything about walnut, and you probably do, the richness and color variations of the grain are a thing of beauty. I had been putting off this table for an eternity, but now I couldn’t wait to get started on it.

I had to let summer get by. My shop is just too hot for a retired old fella who’s no longer on the clock. But when September got here, I got serious about the table.

Most of us take for granted the particulars of any table we sit at to eat. You probably don’t think about how tall or wide it is. You probably don’t look under it to see how the legs are attached. I had some homework to do.

But here’s the heart of this story. Wayne was with me the entire time. His wood. His dream. His daughter. And I kept asking him, “How would you do this?” And he’d answer, “I’d use a mortise and tenon with dowels. Don’t use any screws or nails.”

With his encouragement and Marion’s help, I finally finished. The table will go home soon. A dusty and almost forgotten stack of wood has a new life.

Wayne’s legacy lives on.