Reclaimed Wood Console

Unfortunately, this one is very poorly documented, I somehow lost several pictures... apologies, it will be mostly description of the process and pictures of the finished product...

This one was a commissioned work from my better half: shelves to be put next to the door to store shoes, bags, etc etc... Since we had matching coffee table and TV unit, in a industrial/worn wood style, I decided to keep with that theme. And to spice it up a little bit, I decided it would be a screw less build: tenons, mortises and glue only.

First I needed to source the wood. After looking online I went to Iron Wood in Rozelle (for the Sydney siders, this place is AWESOME!) and gosh, I was not disappointed, so much reclaimed wood to chose from, it is crazy. From railway slippers to fence paling, from beams to floorboards, they have it all.

I set my heart on a few items:

1 railway slipper (you can spot it in the below picture)
a couple of French Oak fence posts
a couple of straight 4x4, of unknown provenance

The railway slipper was only used for the shelving slats, the posts were split in 4 to provide the main structure insuring the worn out parts were facing out and the rest was simply use as support and dividers.

I will not bore you with all the details, it took time, lots of glue and a billion clamps but here are a few highlights:

It was fun to learn about tenons and mortises, pretty much ensure that you match both surfaces at best so they fit. I thought it would be harder but it was actually very doable.
I did not have a table saw back then so I did it all with a circular saw.
Clamps, clamps, clamps and some more clamps... can you ever have too many clamps? NO ! ;-)
Now for the fun part: as I used the railway sleeper only for the slats, I had to cut the said slats... Man, that was hard ! this wood is tough as nails, and cutting along 6 mm slats from it took ages. It actually claimed the life of my old Makita: overheat, Kaput... When I disassembled it in a desperate attempt to save it (I really liked this saw), I found the housing of the coil had melted... Game over. I had to replace it so a grabbed an AEG equivalent from Bunnings (simply because they were doing TV commercials at that time featuring their tools in the blessed hands of Simon Anderson, the inventor of the thruster and probably one of the best surfboard shaper that ever lived... obviously, I was right in their target market...); brought it back home, gave it a go for about 10 mins, and straight back to the shop to exchange it. I m not saying it was a bad tool but it did not work for me at all: poor ergonomic, felt lacking power... So I went back to a Makita (for the same price) and it worked wonders (provided you take your time and let it rest regularly to avoid over heating - still going strong to this day).
The finish is just bees wax I think, or maybe another type of wood wax, but that was it.
Fun Fact: the first ever project to receive my logo ... I guess you could not care less