Table for Outside

 Inspired by a friend's outside table, I decided I'd have a bash at making a table out of metal and glass. My friend's table was (is) made of 100mm x 100mm hardwood, and he has a flashy Festool Domino jointing tool to make the joints. The feature of his table is that it has no stretchers (those are the bits of wood at the bottom of tables that you can catch your shins on). His table is about 2.7m x 1.25m and although I didn't know that as a measurement, I ended up making mine pretty well exactly the same size.

So, I had the design - chunky and made of 100mm box section 3mm steel. No stretchers either. My friend's table had 6 legs, like a snooker table, and I was keen to have only 4 legs on my design.

I haven't got any pics of a pile of 100mm box section, so the first pic I've got is like this:

The long pieces are the length of the table, and the short pieces are the legs, with some others out of shot as the width pieces. In this shot, you can see that I've capped the top and bottom of the legs. That's with 5mm plate. That's what I had!

First cut out bits of 100mm x 100mm 5mm plate with a plasma cutter

Set up for welding with angled magnet thing.

Weld it up - no point trying to be fancy here

The hole is (1) to let welding gas out once you cap both ends and (2) to let cavity wax in. Cavity wax is the stuff that car restorers spray inside chassis tubes, or other hollow structures to prevent corrosion from the inside out from condensation forming inside the tubes and therefore rust.

All ground down - this leg is capped off.

Created the ends - the legs and the cross pieces. Took lots of time to set up to get all the pieces square with one another.

Again, not much point in the Instagram welds as they're getting ground down anyway, but not a bad effort for a rank amateur anyway. Special mention of that tape measure - it's metric only.

More welds, squares, clamps etc.

More, more, more...

That end finished. The little boxes will go in the middle of the length pieces - you'll see.

Again, much faff setting up to weld - big long heavy pieces managed in a small workshop by one bloke.

Welds - I'm getting better at the Insta welds at this point. Doesn't make much odds though - still ground them down! 

Same thing...

Frame complete - you can see what the little boxes were for now.

Lots of boxes of aerosols....

Ford Aubergine from a 70's 1600E

Note the rubber feet. They're on both the top of the legs and the bottom. They're made of ice hockey pucks.

Made an arbour out a coach bolt that I turned down and got the pucks to run true on.

Made a right mess of the lathe. They're pretty precisely the same though!

126Kg of 15mm toughened glass. Been sat there a while. 

Frame complete - sitting on the decking (yep, needs a scrub and a paint...). You can see the puck slices on top to grip the glass top

Table complete! 

The photo makes it look a bit disproportionate. However in the flesh I'm happy with it, and it means that when you're sitting around the table, it's got good overhang so no banging knees on the frame.