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Modern-day carpenter Lyn Ng hard at work.
Lyn Ng is an “upcycler” – someone who converts unwanted wood into new products. That’s because everything she makes – from tables, chairs, and household items like table lamps – is constructed from planks of pallet wood, the kind typically used to transport goods.
The 26-year-old is a carpenter, and makes bespoke, customized furniture out of these discarded pieces of wood. Her pieces go for between $15 (for a namecard holder) and $2,000 (for larger home pieces). She also regularly conducts two-hour workshops to teach others how to upcycle wood, so that they can make their own home decor. This environmentally-friendly approach to carpentry has been gaining momentum overseas, and is now slowly catching on here. Triple Eyelid Studios – where she’s honing her skills as a carpenter and product designer under its founder Jackie Tan – gets most of its used pallet wood from a local company, though from time to time, people bring certain types of wood over, so they can get a beautiful piece of furniture made from it.
Working with discarded wood, in particular, is tedious. First, she has to remove the nails from the pallets. Then, she sends the planks for heat treatment to remove moisture, chemicals and as well as to kill pests. After that, she planes the wood and puts it through a machine to be trimmed to a consistent thickness. Only then is it ready for use. Sounds like a lot of work? It is. But Lyn enjoys the process. “There’s something therapeutic about working with tools and machines,” she says, adding that pallet wood is a relatively light material, so there’s not much heavy-lifting involved.
For all the buzz that Lyn gets for being one of the few female carpenters in Singapore, she’s actually pretty new to the game. Her interest in woodwork was sparked last year, when she and her family moved into a new home. “I wanted to design my own furniture. So I bought planks from Ikea and tried my hand at it.” Although none of the furniture made the cut, Lyn discovered she enjoyed working with her hands.
This bag (which is a lot lighter than it looks) is an example of her playful approach to wood products.
So much so, that she decided to quit her marketing job, and with just a few thousand dollars in her bank account, flew to Taiwan to apprentice under an experienced carpenter for six months. “After every marketing campaign I worked on, I didn’t feel satisfaction because I wouldn’t get to see the end result. With woodwork, I get to hold the finished product, and it's really satisfying,” she says. There, she learnt to use small hand tools, before moving on to power tools (like drills) and finally machines. What started out as a break from corporate life grew to become a personal mission.
The more time Lyn spent working with wood, the more she felt furniture-making generated a lot of wood waste. This drove her to seek alternative sources for her products. That was when she came across Triple Eyelid Studios online, and when she realised Jackie would often scour local industrial parks for used pallet wood to incorporate into his creations, she was sold.
Since Lyn joined Triple Eyelid Studios in mid-2017, she has helped Jackie to engage with people through social media and digital marketing. “A lot of women sign up for our workshops. We have those in their 20s and 30s, as well as stay-at-home mothers,” she says, dispelling the notion that carpentry is too rough for women. “Upcycling prolongs the life of the discarded items and also reduces the burning of wood (to dispose of it), which harms the environment. If more people take on upcycling, it also minimises the amount of trees that are cut down.”
Catch Lyn in action at Triple Eyelid's workshops. Click here to find out more.
This was adapted from a story first published on Her World. Click here to read the original.