Waste not

Here are some boxes that I just finished putting a linseed oil finish on:

flip lid front

flip lid rear

 

sliding lid front

sliding lid rear

And here is the source the wood to make these boxes.

This unused pallet was just gathering dust when I decide to pull it apart and see what it was made of: rough sawn poplar, but the special discovery was the amount and varieties of sapstain fungus that had infected the planks. On the downside, the wood is very brittle and unforgiving to work, readily splitting and chipping off at the edges. On the upside, it's like a painting from the inside out. I have no idea under what conditions the fungi got into this wood, but it's possible that the varied colors are actually more intense due to competition between the different species setting up zone lines to defend their resources.
Controlled rot, and we see beauty in the patterns of the organic battlefields.