Meet the Team—Matt From Recycling
December 2024
Meet Matt Collins, or ‘Matt from Recycling’ as he’s come to be known by! Matt manages our hardworking timber recycling team and has been with us for quite a while, dating back to when we moved from the Brickworks to our current home in Griffith. Recently, Matt’s been working hard on our newly released Urban Sanctuary range—which made its debut at the recent Craft & Design Canberra Festival, and is now on sale. Read on to learn a bit about Matt and his day-to-day at Thor’s.
Matt’s love of timber started when he was a kid, and he learnt early on that recycling materials from the job site was both worthwhile and rewarding. “When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time following my Pa, who was a skilled carpenter, around job sites. One of my first jobs working with Pa was to go around looking for old nails and straightening them out with a hammer so he could reuse them. He would pay me 5 cents per nail!”
Matt’s journey to Thor’s Hammer was as hands-on as his work today. “I was doing odd jobs as a removalist and ended up helping Thor move the workshop from the original site at the old Yarralumla Brickworks to the new site in Griffith, where we are now,” Matt explains. “A few months later, he offered me a job in the recycling team. After spending so much time studying to be a woodwork teacher, I needed a hands-on job to get my head out of the classroom. Starting work in denailing was a really refreshing change for me.”
Thor’s Hammer Recycling Manager, Matt. Photo: Bianca Knox
For Matt, being part of the timber recycling world feels like a privilege. “I really enjoy how unique this work is with the denailing process. Not many people in the timber industry get to see beautiful old-growth timbers like we do.”
He also values the community around timber recycling. “It’s a very supportive and enriching community to be a part of. I love the way that most people involved in timber recycling care deeply about the environment. There are so many people working extremely hard behind the scenes to make a difference. I’m grateful to work alongside so many passionate, like-minded people.”
“Plus, there have been some fairly unique characters working in the recycling team over the years—I’ve learned a lot from them.”
A big part of Thor’s Hammer’s recycling process is timber species identification, a skill Matt has honed over the years. “My first mentor in the recycling team (Chris, aka ‘Walrus’) taught me how to read end grain,” he explains. “Over time—especially when you’re looking at timber every day—you start to become very familiar with the Australian hardwood species that were used in construction in years gone by. I love coming across a unique species that stumps me though! I have to look through my books or research to figure out what it is.”
Recycling timber isn’t always easy, but Matt thrives on the physical challenge. “I really enjoy the physical nature of this work, using basic equipment and going home tired at the end of each day.”
Matt’s role extends beyond just managing the recycling team—he’s an exceptional teacher. Over the years, Matt has trained nearly one hundred timber recyclers, many of whom have gone on to work in other parts of the business, such as the dressing, joinery, and design & sales teams. His approach to teaching is highly personalised; he tailors his instructions to each individual, whether they’re completely new to timber or come in with years of experience.
The recycling team often sees people with a wide range of skill levels—some arrive with extensive timber knowledge, while others might not know a 4x2 from a 12x4 (or one end of a hammer from the other!). Matt’s patient approach ensures that everyone, regardless of their starting point, builds confidence and gains valuable skills.
Matt hard at work on our newly released Urban Sanctuary range. Photos: Bianca Knox
“I really enjoy how unique this work is with the denailing process. Not many people in the timber industry get to see beautiful old-growth timbers like we do.”
As a timber recycler, Matt and his team are usually focused on recycling timber—denailing, docking, species identifying, sorting, and storing.
However, his focus temporarily shifted recently when Thor tasked him with assembling the Urban Sanctuary range, which debuted at the Craft & Design Canberra Festival as part of the large-scale Urban Biome installation.
Urban Sanctuary is designed around an engaging hexagonal footprint. Our Tesserae Decking Tiles are parallelogram-shaped tiles that tessellate into a hexagon, forming intriguing honeycomb-like patterns. Our Pollen Planter integrates seamlessly with the tiles, and the Pollen Seat Top can be placed on top of a planter. This modular arrangement gives you the versatility to create unique landscaping infrastructure and seating in an intimate garden sanctuary.
Building the Urban Sanctuary range was no small task for Matt. “In one seat and top alone there’s 168 LIGNOLOC® nails, plus 74 screws,” he explains. “So for our first run of Urban Sanctuary, I needed to drill 242 pilot holes for each planter / seat.”
Working with the LIGNOLOC® wooden nail system is a new initiative for Thor’s Hammer—it won’t work for everything, but it’s a great addition to our tool kit, as it reduces CO₂ emissions by around 66% compared to traditional steel fasteners.
“It’s an exciting piece of technology that I think will be huge in the future of sustainable joinery and timber construction,” says Matt.
“I get very excited whenever we can use a renewable material to replace the need for a mined resource like steel.”
Urban Biome installation at Craft & Design Canberra Festival, November 2024. Photos: Bianca Knox
Explore the Urban Sanctuary Collection
(Available at introductory prices for a limited time)
Meet the Rest of the Team
As of December 2024, Thor’s Hammer is a 30-strong crew of proud Canberra locals. The team includes highly-skilled timber recyclers, designers and makers, who are skilled in both contemporary and traditional techniques.
The recycling team is responsible for de-nailing and metal detecting timber, grading and sorting by species, and grinding and brushing big posts and beams.
The dressing and picking teams pick out recycled timber orders, and load and unload the trucks which arrive with the salvaged timber, and are then responsible for the sawing and final drying of timbers, and then turning them into decking, flooring and other profiles.
The joinery team is where we make bench tops, custom designed furniture, front doors and more.
And finally, our design and sales, marketing and administration department is the customer-facing component of the business, ensuring that everything continues to tick along smoothly and the workshop teams can continue to work their magic.
Keen to join the team? Keep an eye on our Employment page for available positions, and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Facebook to stay in the loop when new positions pop up.