Corn crib wood repurposed.......

The Town Craft building, Perry, Iowa

Before the era of very expensive combines that picked and shelled the corn right in the field we had corn pickers.  My dad had a two row corn picker and he would have a wagon follow the picker, it was attached to the tractor, and it would collect the days harvest via an elevator type chute that sent it up and dropped it into the wagen.  Back then the corn was brought in on the cob and stored in corn cribs that had spaces between the boards to allow the air into the storage area.  That allowed the corn to continue to dry out and not mold while it was in storage. 

The ISU students found a source for these boards and created a wall with them as a replacement for a partition wall in the room. They also made shutters the same way for the south windows that glided on a rail to allow them to be opened or shut.  The boards had been sent through a table saw to get them back to perfect widths and then they nailed them on evenly.

We were able to take down a display of student's work and use the same nails to hang our work, without adding a single new nail hole blemish.  If you look closely they left a part of a license plate on the boards.  They were used to cover knot holes or areas where rodents had chewed opening for entrance to the corn crib.