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Thread: A recent project - a foray into "Industrial" furniture

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    Billy Golightly's Avatar
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    A recent project - a foray into "Industrial" furniture

    I shared a few pictures of this in another thread, but figured I'd post them here. Despite not being around here a lot lately and real life keeping me tied up, my passion and interest in "making " hasn't changed.

    I've had an idea for a steel table in my office for years. There is this old 10,000 gallon fuel tank we have had laying around since the days i had a commercial MX track (this was the on site water tank then). Anyways, I always thought it'd be cool to take the ends of the tank and make tables out of them. Last few years has saw a lot of time and effort into improving my old office building (a former gas station) whipped into shape. It's been both exhausting mentally physically and also a money pit financially but hey it is getting there...

    In any case, here is what we started with;



    It's 8ft in diameter. .250 thick steel plate. I originally wanted to make a round conference table, but as it turned out it seemed like I didn't really have enough room for that, and there was more demand for something more like a smaller work station for agents to work with customer directly at. So, I decided the next best way to use this, would be to cut it in half, put the flat edge up against the wall in the office, and then about 5 people could sit around it and face a monitor on the wall. End result was pretty close and worked pretty good even actually...

    so, it began by cutting it up. I did this with a torch and used a piece of 2 inch wide 1/4in thick flat bar as a guide.



    Then we had *a lot* of grinding to do to clean up the edges and make the bottom flange level all the way around. After that I welded on the same piece of flat bar to the open edge to complete the flange all the way around.



    several months earlier we had one of the old fuel island canopies torn down at the office to make the parking lot easier to work around. I saved some 8 inch square tubing for a rainy day half way thinking of this project.
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    It sort of got repurposed for this project




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    Billy Golightly's Avatar
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    because of the size of this thing we're talking about here, I wanted to make the pedestal bolt on and off of it. The flat sided flange also had bolt holes in it to bolt against the concrete block wall at the office, but the pedestal was necessary because of the weight of it.





    then we got to stand it up for the first time to see how it would actually look...





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    Billy Golightly's Avatar
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    Checking levelness before welding everything down solid


    the next challenge came in the form of removing all the old thick black anti rust coating stuff that was either dipped or sprayed onto this thing.l I had an idea for a brushed or raw finish steel that was clear coated and that crap wasn't working. If you look you can see the actual depth of this stuff, it was on like 3/16ths thick. I started off using a wirewheel but i was not satisfied with those results and wound up moving onto industrial paint stripper





    Also had to weld in a hole that had been used as a chaining/hook point when moving it also;



    Finally it was completely stripped and I begun drilling holes for the inset electrical outlets I wanted folks to be able to plug their laptops into;




    Also put in a cable hole, also for the wall mounted monitors power and hdmi cables to snake their way through

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    Billy Golightly's Avatar
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    Dad started sanding the top of it but we went through 2 harbor freight jitterbug sanders and gave up. The circled area to the left is where some divets were located I needed to fill in with weld to level off so it would be a smooth writing surface for people;




    I then loaded up the whole thing and took it to be sand blasted because I got frustrated trying to sand/wirewheel it all so it would be clean and suitable for clear coating;





    I wound up using 2qts of automotive clear coat (First time ever spraying clear coat in my life, and spraying from a devilbiss oldschool paint gun (non gravity fed) that was probably 50 years old but it did pretty good actually. if I would have had a booth or a clean environment I coulda done a jam up job I think. So anyways I started with the bottom of the table;




    After the bottom dried over night, we flipped it back over to the top. I did my final prep on the top and started spraying clear coat again;








    Sprayed the pedestal also, of course;


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    Billy Golightly's Avatar
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    Next part came getting it moved into the office. Ran straps through the new electrical outlet holes I had cut;






    A friend and I huffed it into the office in separate pieces. I estimate based on thickness and area of material it is at least 500lbs may be closer to 600 total with the pedestal









    I also found this neat edge stripping stuff on Amazon that worked great on making sure there were no sharp or jagged edges anywhere on the bottom. You just work your way around and it's made with sort of a double lip that keeps it from sliding back off;


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    Billy Golightly's Avatar
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    Aaand semi final product. I wound up getting a longer HDMI cord to run down the wall and clean up that also, just didn't get a picture afterwards. Table will set 5 comfortably even though I only have 3 chairs at it presently. 4 electrical outlets + USB ports, an the ability for anyone to come by plug the HDMI cable into their own laptop and have the image mirrored on the wall.









    And there you have basically 5 years worth of ideas and a pile of literal scrap iron made into something cool over the course of working on it part time for about a month

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    I'm jealous of the material you have laying around. My old man was a pack rat and I have it in my blood, but I get anxiety when stuff starts piling up, so I chuck it in the garbage, then regret sets in.

    Before my mother in law became ill and had to move in with us, we were going to finish our basement in the "industrial" look, but that never happened. I do love the look of repurposed metal and wood. It's a look that I don't think I'll ever get tired of seeing.

    Looks awesome man, great job.
    Last edited by bkm; 06-01-2019 at 05:38 AM.

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    Billy Golightly's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bkm View Post
    I'm jealous of the material you have laying around. My old man was a pack rat and I have it in my blood, but I get anxiety when stuff starts piling up, so I chuck it in the garbage, then regret sets in.

    Before my mother in law became ill and had to move in with us, we were going to finish our basement in the "industrial" look, but that never happened. I do love the look of repurposed metal and wood. It's a look that I don't think I'll ever get tired of seeing.

    Looks awesome man, great job.

    My girlfriend is always after me about how much stuff I have and why can't everything be thrown away. I'm a little bit that way about stuff, but I also see and realize future purpose in it so usually if its out of sight it's out of mind also to a degree...lol

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    The key is getting it out of sight. That's 90 percent of the battle for me.

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    Looks good Billy! Nice beginning to end pictures. It has that steampunk look to me which I dig!
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    Nice table and build pics

  12. #12
    Billy Golightly's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hondatcs View Post
    Looks good Billy! Nice beginning to end pictures. It has that steampunk look to me which I dig!
    Yeah I've always kind of liked that style also. I've found seems to really be 2 sort of different (but similar) architectural styles I'm going to call it;


    Industrial - which is more raw metal, usually grays/blacks/whites in your contrasting colors, things like exposed roof joists, exposed mechanicals (electrical panels, conduits, etc like a factory or something).

    Steampunk - Big emphasis on copper colored and coated fixtures, big honking light bulbs, water pipes and valves repurposed into different fixtures and uses, etc. This is the style I was initially interested in the most myself as it is pretty unique and definitely a bit eclectic. I'm weird and like weird stuff, so a real estate office that looked like a legit mad scientists lair seemed up my alley. But alas I had to tone it down a little bit, and arrived at a bit more neutral "industrial" styling.

    I did wind up with some pretty cool hanging light fixtures I found on Lowes, they're actually supposed to be kitchen island lights, but I got 6 of them and hung them in the bay area. They have the "old style" edison wire filament bulbs which are not very bright but are cool to look at. Apparently you can get LED lights in the same style that are bright like a regular bulb but still retain that vintage look. They're pretty expensive though so that is down the road a ways probably. Everyone always compliments them seeing them in person and I'm pretty happy with them. I may do something more for lighting over certain corners or areas eventually and would love to find a way to use some of these https://www.lowes.com/pl/Edison-bulb...ent=3624492052 in different areas. Here are couple pictures when we were still getting the bay finished up before we really got moved in out there with cubicles and everything else.

    We left all the rafter exposed as the roof got insulation on the top when it was redone last year. I eventually may want to do a drop ceiling with oldschool tin ceiling tiles or something but that's a long ways down the road also.

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  13. #13
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    I love it! Building new stuff out of old stuff.

    I have tons of "projects" like this just waiting for me to get the time to build them............
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    That is pretty unique entrance!! Did you put in the two set of glass doors? Can you lower the top doors?
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    Very cool build, Billy!

    Couple questions:
    - How many hours would you say you guys had into this project? Seems like maybe a lot.
    - Can you estimate the weight of this thing? Either plate and base separately or as a whole unit.

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