It’s not just weight but friction. Depending on the flooring you could add a rubber pad to the bottom of the piece to help. If you do go the cavity route, steel washers are pretty cheap and would be heavy, or as someone else suggested, some lead weights will work.

Nice, how different does it sound to a modern one?

I saw a tip for paint recently that I haven’t tried yet, but it might work here too. If you get some painters tape and make a V over the top it acts as a spout and it never gets on the threads

Link to image

I loath getting on my high horse, but don’t take things from forests unless they are explicitly there for the taking or you have permission from someone. The odd small item here and there may not seem significant but if everybody did it it would have a significant impact.

I wish I had the time to do this but I look forward to the entries.

I don’t want to be preachy but I’d like to take this opportunity to draw everyone’s attention to the sustainability of rare hardwoods.

I could talk at length about the socioeconomic impact of rare hardwoods as well as the environmental impact, but to keep it short, the wood database has a good article on the sustainability of darkwoods.

https://www.wood-database.com/ebony-dark-outlook-dark-woods/

Another useful method is drilling out the hole and filling it with matchsticks and wood glue. Let it dry, cut it flat and rescrew the hole. It takes a while longer to dry but I think it might be more secure than hot glue.

I think it depends on how much you are willing to maintain it and if you are flexible on the types of materials you use. Where you live will have a significant impact as well, if you live near the sea up north then you are going to have a harder time than if you live inland in the south.

BLO works but you will have to maintain it regularly and how regularly depends on the weather.

You can use specific wood types that work well outside; pressure treated timber starts off looking a blue/green colour but fades to a silver and won’t need looking after for a long time. Teak is the classic option for outdoor furniture as it’s naturally resistant to pests and erosion, it’s an exotic hard wood though so not the most sustainable. White oak is resistant to rot as well but isn’t easily available. . Any of these with an annual coat of BLO will probably keep them looking new, if you don’t mind them becoming more rustic then you can leave it for longer.

I’ve not got experience with repairs like this but I would cut the lifted veneer with a very sharp knife, scrape any adhesive off the back and out of the hole and reglue with lots of pressure from something flat with as much weight as you can get on it. It won’t be perfect but it will be flat again.

Looks like walnut to me, maybe American black walnut?

Sounds like a good decision. Good luck!

To be sure for yourself, you require two experts. 1: Get someone in to do a woodworm survey to check if there is an active infestation. There are a couple of easy checks you can do to make sure a ‘specialist’ doesn’t try to con you. First is to get some paper and tape it to the underside of the wood, leave it a while and if little pellets appear on the paper then there are active woodworm in there. Second is a wood moisture sensor, from what I remember dry wood isn’t palatable to woodworm but I could be wrong on that so do some reading. If there aren’t any signs then it could have been there for a long time, depending on how old the building is. 2. You’ve said somewhere else that you’ll be putting some stuff above it, if that concerns you then get a structural engineer to take a look at it. They can tell you if it’s anything to worry about.

This is most of my woodworking. Pallet wood trunks and laptop stands and recycling boxes. Eventually it becomes your aesthetic and everything is ‘rustic’. In reality I don’t have the attention span for a project that lasts longer than a weekend.