In the process of expanding the Stockpile product line, I make a lot of prototypes. Some are rickety failures initially unsuccessful, partially due to the difficulty of designing around pre-existing components. (And, perhaps, some overly-ambitious design elements on my part.) But every now and then, one comes together so well it feels like I’ve made it before. Every bolt falls in the right place, every angle comes out at 90°. Maybe I’m learning from my mistakes, or getting familiar with the materials. Whatever the reason, this coffee table was one of the smoothest projects I’ve ever designed.
This is only the rough assembly, done to make sure the holes are in the right places and to make sure it won’t collapse under its own weight. The wood isn’t sanded or sealed, and most of the steel is unpainted. But this design is exciting for me, and not just because it’s Stockpile’s first coffee table. I took a cue from shared components in military design, and used one standard size of hardware. That way, this table can ship disassembled without forcing buyers through a fiendishly complicated set of instructions. Check out the gallery of steps in the prototyping process, with explanations of how the whole thing came together.
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- The first step was gluing the oak boards that would make up the tabletop and shelf. Here the tabletop is glued up, and clamped in two directions to keep it as flat as possible.
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- The table legs are two rectangular frames, which pass over the tabletop instead of supporting it from underneath. Instead of drilling through the steel, I milled holes for weld-nuts so I could keep the hardware hidden.
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- I cut the holes a bit deeper than necessary, to give myself room for error.
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- The nuts fit perfectly into the holes milled out, and were TIG-welded in place. I sandblasted the metal to to remove oil and dust, so I could check these parts’ fit without getting any grime on the wood.
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- I bolted the beams through holes drilled in the wood to check their fit. The star-shaped pieces in the wood are threaded inserts. These use the same bolts as the legs, and hold the ammo cans flush against the wood.
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- From the top, no hardware was visible. The table legs fit perfectly into the grooves cut out for them.
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- Once I checked the fit of the top, it was time to weld the leg frames. I ground the welds flat, but decided not to sandblast the rest of the frames until I knew how the whole project fit together. As you can see here, it’s square, level, and steady.
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- Since I already sandblasted one of the ammo cans, I’ll be re-painting both a military green. On future versions I’ll keep the original paint. The legs will either be powder-coated in matte black, or blackened with a chemical patina.
[...] of my new coffee table, the Perimeter, is finally complete! About a month ago I posted some details of the design process, but afterwards I got sidetracked by a very big, very exciting, and (for now) completely top-secret [...]