Cable Spool Table

OK, who hasn't wanted one one of those cable spools that are always lying around construction sites? Turned on their sides, they make a perfect back yard table. Next to the grill, a great place to stand and have a few cold beers. I, like you, wanted the same thing. Only I want mine to be in the dining room and not to be a spider fill, rotting piece of crap. So I took this project to the next level. I found your standard large everyday cable spool, less the cable, transported it back to the garage, and visualized the final result.

I dismantled the entire thing, then tore into working on the top. I took apart the top board by board, driving every nail out with a hammer and punch. As I reassembled it I added 1/4 inch red oak slats between each board to fill the gaps. Next I hand planed the joints where the boards and red oak met. I really liked the stenciling that was on the top so I traced and made my own stencil to reapply later. Once the whole top was back together I needed to true up the edge. I decided to use a jig saw with a long blade and took off about 1/2 inch all the way around. This was the wrong decision all together, it made it much worse. To fix this bought an extra long plunge bit for the router and built a circle cutting jig to mount it on. This made the edge perfect and I only had to take off about another 1/4 inch. I still wasn't totally happy with the finish of the edge, even after sanding. Adding an edge trim was the only way to resolve this.

How did I do this you ask? Of course I built an overly elaborate mold to laminate slats of red oak into I giant hoop. Crazy, Crazy process, please leave to the pros. I glued and nailed to hoop little by little working my way around and brought the two ends together. I filled the empty nail holes and small gaps. Then followed it all with a belt sander to bring it all flat. Using the stencil that I made earlier, I re-spray painted the graphic back one and distressed it with an orbital sander. Sanded the entire thing; top, underside, sides, everything.

Then added a dark Jacobean stain and three coats of satin urethane. Done with the top, only took about 2 months, working after work and on weekends. Now it's time to move on the the center section and bottom. The overall plan at this point is to integrate a cabinet into the center "barrel" section and reduce the diameter of the bottom disk. then raise the entire table up 10 inches to 42" bar height. The legs are going to be poured cement, I'll get into that more later in the process.

UPDATE:

After a long pause and then lots of work I've finished this project and am ready to fill you in on the process. The cabinet section posed to be the most difficult to get done. It had several difficult pieces to fit together just right. I used my circle cutting router jig to make two disks the same size as the inside diameter of the cabinet. I used these disks to affix all the outside slats to and double as the shelf and top of the cabinet. I cut three of the slats to make the door of the cabinet and fastened them together with two steel straps, screwed in place horizontally. After it was all together and everything of lined up I stained and urethaned the whole piece.

I again used the router jig to cut the bottom section so that it would allow for stools to be pulled in closer to the table. I left about 8 inches extending past the cabinet and sanded it, taking off all the rough edges. Then I stained and urethaned it like the cabinet and top. Initially I planned to raise the entire table up to 42" bar height, but after getting it all together it stands right at 38" and is just a little above counter top height. Its very comfortable at this height and I decided not to raise it any higher. I just added 4 rubber door stoppers to the bottom to protect the floor and help is sit level.

I bolted the whole messed together using 12 7" carriage bolts and nuts, from the inside of the cabinet to the top and bottom. The original bolts extended all the way from top to bottom and would have been a pain to align through the cabinet. Plus they would have been inside the cabinet and wouldn't have looked very pleasant. The whole project came together much better than I ever expected and is going to last me a very long time. Now it's time to construct stools...6 of them. See all the pictures here