How to Harvest Bed Springs

In order to catch your eye and look at this post, there needed to be a pretty result, thus the posting of someone elses project.  I did not do this, but found it online.  This is a possible idea for using some of the bed springs. 

Also, Sue just used a bed spring in her Thanksgiving centerpiece display in the blog portion of this site just last week.

Any other ideas, please share.

1)  This is not a project for the faint of heart.  It is down and dirty!  The first thing I did was to get a trusty mask on and cut away the mattress ticking.  I threw this as well as the fiber fill in our garbage.  Don't need dust mites, thank you!  In this photo my dh is trying to figure out what to do next.  There was a complete wood frame around it, which he removed.

2)  Jon removes all of the c clips that are holding the mattress springs to the wood frame.

3)  Jon is breaking down the wood frame.  You may recycle this too, as it seemed to be in good condition, but with the sun setting and cold weather in Minnesota on this day, we just broke it down and stock piled it by our kindling wood for our bonfires.

4)  The bed springs without the framing.  There is a lot of secured wires involved in the make up of this bed spring.  It was built to last and is from the 1960's.

5)  My advice is to wear a face mask, since the mattress is old and probably filled with dust mites.  Yuck!  Me with my mask on.

With the wood frame now gone, I am cutting cross wires that are holding in the springs with a wire cutter on this photo.

6)  A wire cutter is the most important tool in this project, as well as a hammer for the wood frame removal.

7)  This photo as well as #5 show the criss cross pattern/weaving that makes up this bed spring.  We cut the wires and unwound the weaving to free up the springs.

8)  The end result!  42 bed springs to play with and figure out projects for.

The interesting thing about this, is that the bed spring had been my Grandma's last bed, so has a bit of a sentimental value to it.  The other thing is, that it would of cost us $25 to get rid of this, had we not harvested the bed springs like I wanted to do.