Having recently made a stool during a course at Edinburgh Open Workshop (EOW), I've decided to make a coffee table for us. I’m going to use wood I was given some years ago in the form of partially disassembled church pews. They were removed from a church in Paisley years before and had sat in a store ever since. I think the wood is Pitch Pine, certainly some type of softwood with a striking darkly striped grain. But it's hard to identify due to the covering of dark stain and the years of oxidisation on the unfinished surfaces.

As this will be my first piece of “fine” furniture built from scratch, I've decided to keep to a simple design, a rectangular mortice and tensioned frame with a good thick top and a slatted shelf. I'm hoping to cut the joints by hand, but I will be returning to EOW to convert the pew material into planed stock first.