By Charisse Bennett

You can buy a table, or you can make a table from raw materials. Or you can do something in between, like buy a partially assembled table, and build it at home yourself. There’s often a great deal of satisfaction associated with constructing parts of a table yourself. You’re released from the arduous tasks of fabricating every single piece, yet you can partake in the act of creation by assembling the table yourself.

The same could be said with Emergent Structure’s community workshop for building rain barrel stands for the Earth Craft houses in Savannah Gardens: Residents will find satisfaction in the act of assembling rain barrel stands (and learn some carpentry tricks along the way) without be confronted with the burden of preparing the materials.

The preparation for these materials began about a year ago, when the studs were reclaimed and denailed from the previous structures on site by volunteers from Emergent Structures and the Girl Scouts of Historic Georgia. While some of the studs have already moved onto various new lives, others have waited patiently until this project came along.

This post reveals a little about the process of prototyping a stand from the available reclaimed materials and then pre-cutting the materials to make the final assembly enjoyable, educational and manageable within a workshop format.

First, the design had to be simple enough that special tools, skills, or processes weren’t required, all the cutting of materials needed to be done beforehand to eliminate additional risks on the day of the event, and the entire construction needed to be of a timely manor so we don’t take up an entire Saturday afternoon. By keeping these requirements in mind, the design you see above is what developed, after an initial trial and error construction.

The construction materials are all reclaimed and a vast majority has been harvested from the previous Savannah Gardens’ houses. The hardware is new, and the stain, while ‘new,’ has been reclaimed from a previous job site.

All the materials were gathered together by Scott Boylston and myself, and then cut down to size with the help of Andrew Carleton. That’s about 250 pieces of wood! They are ready to be hauled to the event site for construction.

The original design used reclaimed bricks form the site to lift the wood off the concrete pad in order to prevent untimely rot. After showing the design to the contractors who are completing the houses, there was one more change. Instead of using bricks for the footing support (image below) they preferred an aluminum plinth to hold the wood off the concrete pad they are including in the installation. While this is new material and an additional cost, it should prolong the life of the stand and therefore prolong the use of the rain barrel.

On the day of the event—MARK IT DOWN, VOLUNTEERS: SATURDAY, MARCH 10th— the materials will be divided into separate stations to create an assembly line of construction. People are invited to chose a station or start at the beginning and follow the process all the way through. This way everyone gets the chance to help exactly how they want. Our friends at Thrive Café will also provide light refreshments to keep everyone energized and refreshed.