Building a Round Table please help
BuildHerBluePrints
| Posted in General Discussion on
I am wanting to create a base for my round marble table top and I’ve been seeing diys with planters and that. I wander what the best way would be to crease a base like the one I will post a picture of. And how to make sure to make it heavy enough so it doesn’t tip over.
Replies
The column could be made from two pieces (one for the cone, one for the bullet shape) turned on a lathe and then glued together (or maybe glued to a central post that fits between them (sort of a big floating, round tenon). They look sizable, so you might have to glue up the rough stock and then take care in the sanding; if you're going to paint them, you don't want the joint lines to show. Maybe you'd need to epoxy the seams, not sure. If you want to weight the pieces, you can fill them with sand or even something heavier (buckshot, fishing weights, etc.) and seal the bottom with a plywood insert.
Honestly, it looks like a tough thing to pull off in wood. Good luck!
Big lathe no problem, it wouldn't even be difficult. Few people have such a lathe. You could stack laminate , Wendell Castle style ,and with rasps, spoke shaves, sanders and elbow grease sculpt it. You could taper miter two cones but that would require some pretty advanced skills and some tricky math, a i want to end up with 10 fingers rig to hold it for bandsawing ,then sculpt that. How many sides? 6 isn't enough , 8 ,10, 12 ? Maybe six ,- you would need to draw it out to know -and no tapers to create a blank for turning if you can find the lathe to handle it.
The base in that photo looks adequate in width to support even a heavy top. That's the thing, the width of the base in relation to the width of the top. The column weight isn't going to make that much difference ,it could be hollow. You'll need to figure a way to fasten your top. That picture your showing looks like something that was cast, not wood, by the way.
I was thinking to put a 24” wood panel base as that’s 70% of the size of the marble top I have then I was going to use two metal planters stacked on top the bottom one face down to have the wider part attached to the base using epoxy and blue to put it all together then plaster it all to give it the finishing look I’m looking for.
Most woodshop lathes would be suitable for turning those if you were keen - a 16" diameter is a typical maximum but some will do outboard turning of almost arbitrary size, but it's a nightmare of a job requiring a segmented glue-up or half a large tree.
I have such a lathe, but I'd just buy a couple of planters like you mentioned and bolt them together. Why make life harder than it needs to be?