04:15 Jul 31 2019
Times Read: 860
Still under lock down and bored. So! I thought I would share step by step last year when I built my bar. I finished it at Christmas and am pretty proud of it. I took Wood Shop at college and learned some tricks. Mogy and I both love these Home Project's and we have a thread now in our coven called Useless Home Projects that I am sure only he and I look at. So, thought I would share it here. I love to tinker around and build things. I have a work shop connected to the house. Plus, Liliancat' gets turned on when I wear a tool belt. I will try to make it entertaining for you reader:
Anyway, over a year ago I decided it was time to get around to building a bar in my workshop.
Step #1: Figure out what I want to build. I wanted a Tiki bar, and I got a great deal on a slab of Koa wood:
Looks like shit as a raw flitch, but at $1800 the price was right. Fortunately it arrived - the weather warmed up, my driveway got slushy, and the driver of the delivery semi didn't have the balls to gun it up the slope. He managed to get himself unstuck eventually...
Here it is partially planed and sanded, rubbed with denatured alcohol to show the color and texture.
Step 2: PROCRASTINATE!!!
Step 3: Finally get off my dead ass and decide to start again.
So, next thing to do is build a big ugly box in my shop:
That thing is entirely 2x10s and 2x8s. Why? Because the damn bar top is oddly shaped and forces me to have a small base. There's barely room for anything other than the kegerator in there, so no point in making shelves or cabinets.
And Koa is super-dense. The slab is 250 pounds, easy.
It is also not anchored to the floor. The slab under that laminate is concrete, and I hate putting anchors into that shit. So the box needs to be heavy to counter an off-centered, very heavy slab.
There's also a hundred-pound sandbag inside that thing, just because it was left over from another project. I figured, why not?
Step #4: Make box less ugly.
The bamboo to wrap it had just arrived that afternoon, but I haven't had a chance to get to it yet. So here it is cleaned up a little with some trim, from the other side where the kegerator is visible.
I said the slab was heavy? I had to load it into the tractor's bucket to move it inside, and wrassle it in.
Then I had to wait on victims to help lift the damn thing onto the base:
The painter's tape is covering a bark pocket I want to preserve. Unfortunately my epoxy did not arrive for a week, so I had to hold it in place until I can pour.
I also filled most of that void visible on the lower end, but leaving room to run beer tubing up through. It's not a defect, it's a feature... The end that sticks out will need to be supported, for stability and to reduce the risk of breakage. I purchased a tiki to put under it...
Step #5: Tiki Trephining
I got a couple of friends semi-loaded on wine and they foolishly agreed to help me lift the bar top up into place. One of them also gave me a good idea--get a couple of small 8" tikis, mount tap handle threads in them, and use them on the tap.
Before attaching the slab to the base, I wanted to get the tiki in place for a leg. It was only slightly too tall, and all I planned to do was strip the finish off the top, bore a couple holes for pegs (and corresponding holes in the bar top), and then trim a tiny bit off the base of Mr. Tiki.
Holding a 6" diameter tiki in place on a saw turns out to be tricky, the damn thing slipped and I trimmed off too much, leaving it slightly too *short*
All I had on hand to build the base back up with was 2x10 stock. I wound up making a boot for it by marking out a 7" circle (the diameter of the tiki base) on a chunk of 2x10, routing it out 3/4" of an inch deep. Then I marked an 8" circle on the same center, rough cut the circle with the saw, and smoothed it into a pretty decent circle on the belt sander. The tiki is hand carved anyway, so being slightly off-round actually fits with the rest of the piece.
I had to (very carefully) trim slightly more of the tiki base to get the combined tiki/base to the right height, but it works. I stained it, put it in place, glued it up and then in a moment of paranoia decided someone will eventually get drunk and kick the damn thing, so I added some metal brackets to stiffen it up.
That done, I put in the lag screws from the cabinet up into the top to fix it in place. Whole thing is probably 600 pounds by now.
After that, staining the bar base, and then enjoying the fumes while applying bamboo. One piece down, 80-ish to go:
I need to get a different blade for my scrollsaw; the ones I had were for rough cutting. Not the best thing for thin-walled bamboo. It tends to bind.
This was as far as I got before the smell drove me out for the night:
I honestly don't know why I thought applying 80+ pieces of trim would go quickly. It took weeks:
My epoxy finally arrived, but it was too late in the day to mix up a test batch. That, and I sorta lost the pipe I'd planned to run up through the wood from the kegerator to the beer tower Ohhhhh, I see.
So I left it in the care of my assistants:
And decided to start work on the sideboard. Since the bar has no internal storage, I needed a place to put glassware and booze.
The large shop isn't a good place to work with glue or finish, being full of cats at the time. So I spent an hour or cleaning out the dust and spiders from the smaller shop area and moved the saws and drill press over.
There of course is no koa wood here in town. The local hardwood selection was pretty uninspiring in general--there was plenty of it, it just had no character at all. The only piece that spoke to me at all was a piece of 8/4 African mahogany. Not quite enough to make the whole top for the sideboard from it, so I had to punt and get a second piece to fill it out.
So it's roughed into shape and glued up:
Looks like shit under the metal halide lamps. It's a tradeoff, but you can't trust color.
Here it is moved into the house, cleaned up and rubbed down with alcohol while the glue dries.
Then while the epoxy test cured, I hauled this thing back out and smooth it. By hand, unfortunately. I had to get an electrician to beef up the power in the shop while I was doing this project, I'd love a large jointer and planer but I didn't have a free 20 amp circuit...
These guys really need names, any suggestions? I wanted "Drunk" and "Disorderly", but that got vetoed:
I bet Mord and Raven can think of a name, right Bro's?
Top finish was finally complete, had to use panorama mode to get the whole thing in frame so yay distortion!
Wanted to get further with the sideboard for the bar, but I wound up spending that morning bring in a new horse we brought at a auction.
I did get a couple of the legs rough fitted. This would have gone way faster if I glued & screwed all the parts, but I can't make myself cut too many corners, even though the wood (other than the top) is cheap lumber. Need to clean up the fit, then two more legs to go. After that, fit on the base and shelves, and then the back. I planned on doors over the center shelves (so I can lock the liquor in...
I had to bring the sideboard in the house for the glue to cure (it was 6 degrees F outside), but it's together enough to function as a shelf
Door on? Check!
Glasses hanging? Check!
Knick-knacks tossed on? Check!
Tasty beverage to enjoy? Check!
( added paper umbrellas to amazon shopping list)
This whole project took me almost a year!!!
The End.
COMMENTS
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Liliancat
07:15 Jul 31 2019
Ohhhhh Ilike the bar. It turned out very awesome. You did amazing job hun
Liliancat
07:15 Jul 31 2019
Steals the smoothy and runs
LORDMOGY
07:42 Jul 31 2019
MordrakusxMortalitas
11:50 Jul 31 2019
How about "Chaos and disaster"? Or Bill and Ted lol
Hmm if you are good at woodwork, perhaps you can make some coffins for me, I think I am going to need it for some bodies haha
ChampagneDestiny
18:32 Jul 31 2019
I would love to see the bark pocket up close. I love how those can be filled. They really make the natural look pop.
Very nicely done Sire.