I haven't posted in awhile. I'm still trying to figure out what to post about. Regular posting is kinda tricky for me as I don't do much I consider worthwhile to post about.
Thoughts on that would be appreciated.
This was a project that happened this weekend though that I thought came out well and was fun to do.
I can't take credit for much of the work because my grandpa did it, nor did I grab any other picture until I saw the finished product and realized how nice it looked.
This barrel table has been in our family for many years, as long as I can remember. My grandma used to store large tupaware and metal pans in it as the top opens. At some point, someone redid the top though and it became unstable as they made it bigger, and opening it would push it to the brink of tipping. My grandpa had been keeping it in the basement with the plan to work on it at some point. This past weekend he finally got that project done.
What he actually built was the base that's at the bottom of the barrel. Inside is a frame made of 2 by 4s. The outer finish is luan plywood. I came down to help my grandpa cut a new piece of the luan down to size to top it off. Once we had that done he was trying to figure out how to cut out a hole for an imperfect barrel that was had made we figure 130 years ago or so. First, we tried the string and pin trick for the base cut but we couldn't get a perfect circle, I was sitting thinking about it and laid eyes on some of the luan scraps that had been cut off when we trimmed it down and I had an idea. I drilled out a hole for the pin we were using and another so just the pencil led would stick through my grandpa chuckled at me saying he should have thought of it. That drew a nice sharp circle that looked great, only problem now was we had a perfect circle for an imperfect barrel.
My grandpa first tried using a router to trim it out to fit the wood but it wasn't stable enough to work well. Then he had me use a drill mounted sander to slowly sand out anything that was catching until it fit. After that, we nailed it onto the frame and he put a nice varnish on it and it came out looking beautiful.
I never did much woodworking as a kid but I hope that I can do more with my grandpa in the future because a project like this is awesome and the results are wonderful to see at te end.
I hope you enjoyed and thanks for the read!
