Stolen right from the “about me” section of my work-in-progress website, here is the description of the build for our new table/bar thing. One thing I didn’t mention there was that the legs are 1″ cast iron and the drink rail is ½” cast iron. Not that it matters, but there you go. Now, the post:
I started by slowly collecting shipping pallets, stripping them down, planing the resultant boards to exactly ½" wide and then cutting them into 2" strips. Once I had enough strips (it took awhile), I arranged and re-arranged the strips until i was satisfied with the layout, and then started gluing. With five wide clamps and three ratchet straps, I managed to get a pretty tight squeeze (really, one can never have too many clamps), and then let the thing dry for 48 hours, then I put it in the sun, still clamped, for a blazing 4 hours of direct application of heat. Once another 24 hours had passed (heat and cool testing), I popped the clamps off and started to sand. This was a long process, but worth every minute, because the next step was to paint on a couple very light coats of polyurethane with a bout of sanding in between. One last smooth with 800 grit paper on the orbital sander, and I was ready to put the legs and the drink rail on. Cast iron needs its own post, but suffice it to say that paint thinner in 2 applications with lots of rags and then some wax, purchased specially for this occasion, seems to do the trick of making the iron not smudgy anymore and yet still protected from rust. What's not to like? Some more measuring, some drilling and a handful of screws and the table was finished.
