Last Saturday I convinced a few folks from the Helena Woodworkers Guild and the manger at Helena's Restore to head over to Missoula and take part in a charity event called Spontaneous Construction (SponCon). The event takes place at Home Resource in Missoula. Home resource is a nonprofit building material resource center. They have been hosting SponCon for the last 5 years. In the event, they challenge teams to create something (artistic, functional, or otherwise) using only store materials in a 6-hour period. The store is very well stocked, so with a little ingenuity the sky is the limit. Since I was the only person in our group who had even visited Home Resource, we showed up on Saturday morning with open minds but little in the way of ideas. We all agreed that we should do something relatively simple so we could enjoy the event without stressing about the 6-hour time limit. Our team consisted of Jeff Camplese of Rising Sun Woodworking, Will Rex of Golden Stone Carpentry, Steve Staneart from Helena's Restore and myself. Given the large stock of items, coming up with an idea turned out to be relatively easy. Will's wife Heidi immediately found some really cool granite slab remnants. Almost simultaneously, Jeff came across a 1" thick reclaimed pine board that he really liked. Within minutes we had a sketch drawn out for our "Piedra y Madera" (Stone and Wood) sofa/hall shelf. The whole piece is made from a single piece of wood and likely a single stone. The only hardware used for assembly were 6 old square nails. Our piece qualified for the benefit auction and will get raffled off on October 19th in Missoula.
Check out the photo gallery of the event to see some of the other creations. Also, check out this time-lapsed video posted by a friend of mine. He also has more on the re-purposed garden tool project on his blog, Montana Wildlife Gardener.
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