Well what a lovely day. It started with the alarm not going off and then the van hire company losing my booking. So I had to get the long wheel base transit. Finally set off for Corby by about 9:30 after picking up Martin (cant-weld-wood). We made good time, just over 2hrs. Just as we pulled into the industrial estate I realised we'd been following MarkW for couple of miles!
No one was kidding when they said this place was an Aladdin's cave! It's so jam packed that it's spilled outside! It's mainly chairs, mountains of them. There are also a great deal of metal tables with composite tops. It's quite dark in there. At first I thought this was going to be a problem, but your eyes adjust to it. Also the wood is all near to a side door, so plenty of daylight. I had a walk round and took some pics:
We where shown around briefly and then left to our own devices. Luckily for us there where huge piles of tabletops waiting for us. We sorted through one pile and then moved on to another. On closer inspection the second pile seemed to be another type of wood. My instinct was Mahogany. I'll take some close up pics tomorrow to see what people think.
There where a pile of slightly bigger tops. We rejected these as they where a little on the slim side, perhaps 25mm as is.
I ended up with about 25 tops. The beech legs didn't seem worth it to me, tho I was tempted. Because of the mortices, the usable timber was quite short. Without an idea of what to do with them, I thought they'd just be clutter.
After we'd loaded the tops on the van we went out separate ways to have a mooch. I bagged an engineer's vice
£15
and a pair of No.71 Router Planes
£5 the pair! :shock:
I also got a very hefty beech workbench which had a lot of usable timber in it. I'll take a pic tomorrow.
There is a corner with some lovely machinery. I took lots of pics and was temped by a morticer and Mark dug out an HPLV extractor. However, sadly we learned later that none of this is for sale. They are intending to set up their own workshop to process some of the wood theirselves. I guess you can't argue with that. More pics of the machinery on my gallery.
There are other woodworking goodies for sale. I found a box of marking gauges and cutting gauges:
No less than 2 Delta scrollsaws.
2 Veneer presses. There was a very large one and this small one:
If you want an adjustable assembly table, how about using a hospital bed?
We bumped into Graham (chipchaser) and had a chat at the end of the day whilst looking at our booty:
Martin (can't-welld-wood) on the left and Graham on the right and some lanky streak in the middle.
We were lucky with the traffic on the way back, just a little delay on the Dartford bridge. Dropped Martin off and then came back to unload. With it being dark I decided to stack it on the drive for tonight and will sort it in the morning. Mark is staying up there on business, so his haul is tucked up in my workshop:
Sorry about all the pics, I think I got carried away. I think it helps illustrate what an oasis this place is. More pics
here. If you're dithering, GO! You'll find a bargain for sure.
I'm absolutely pooped.
