Old chairs are a good source of hardwood pieces for toolmaking

Lovely seasoned beech, perfect for tool handles like chisels, knives etc.

If you need some, then look out for old chairs...

Because beech is traditionally used for furniture, discarded chairs are a good source.

It is harder to find real hardwood chairs now - many modern chairs are made from plywood or composite softwoods and veneered high density fibre boards, plastic etc. - BUT if you keep your eyes out, you can spot the odd hardwood chair.

Last week, I got lucky found this forlorn dining chair left by bins. As always, grab any finds like these as soon as you see them. They are often gone if you leave it a day before you come back.

The covering was pretty mank, so that came off

Apart from the wooden frame, there are other reclaimable things in a chair.

Small pieces of foam like this are handy when making stools and things.

And this inner fluffy wadding is also handy stuff for filling things.

The cardboard was not worth keeping...

But I did keep the heavy cotton canvas lining material. Handy for cleaning rags etc.

And it never hurts to have some decent screws for nothing.

Once all that had been removed, I sawed off the the main beech pieces (legs and chair back uprights) from the cheaper softwood seat base frame to leave eight lovely lengths of beautiful well-seasoned, even grained beech. These are all about 40mm square and between about 15cm and 35cm long

Here's a close-up of the typically even grain of beech. This will be perfect for turning later, when I need to make a tool handle.