Sunday, January 8, 2017

Getting Crafty - Industrial Style

A couple little home improvement projects I completed recently (over the last several weeks).

I scoured the internet for the perfect little table for my guitar room to set my amp on so it would be off the floor and also to organize other music items (tuners, strings, harmonica's, etc.) After hours of internet search I couldn't quite find the perfect size table I was looking for, so I decided to just to build the exact table that I was thinking of in my mind that I could fit my little practice amp on perfectly. 

A friend of mine who lives in Crested Butte makes his own furniture using black steel gas piping and slabs of walnut wood with live edges (bark still on). His apartment in Crested Butte is adorned with his own furniture that he has made, it is really quite awesome. Apparently this "industrial" do-it-yourself furniture is very modern and is all the rage these days. I watched a couple videos on Youtube and got a couple ideas on how to make my own table and my own bathroom shelf using pieces of wood and steel piping that you can buy at Home Depot. 

Here are a couple projects:

Project #1: Guitar Amp Table

The early stages of the table involved cutting some 2"x10" pieces of construction lumber (Douglas fir) that I bought at Home Depot to length for the shelves and then sanding and drilling holes for the pipes:














After that I stained the wood with a dark walnut stain and put a couple coats of gloss polyurethane on. I also spray-painted the pipes with a black gloss spray paint.

Final assembly of the table came out pretty good. What is unique about this design is that the table uses NO hardware (no screws, nails or glue etc.) The shelves just sit on the metal pipe couplings. With a bit of sanding with a drum sander in the holes to make them a bit bigger, the pipes fit in just snug with no wiggle room, which is what I wanted.


A finished guitar amp table. The table is heavy and is rock solid (no wobble at all). I am very happy with how it turned out.










Project #2: Bathroom Shelf with Metal Piping Towel Rack

After the guitar amp table was finished I turned my attention to a bathroom shelf using the same metal gas piping. This time I went with a metallic colored pipe. (I spray painted the pipes metallic grey to look more authentic) I also went to a wood specialty shop and got a nice piece of spalted maple for the shelf. Because this piece would be in the bathroom, it needed to look nice. 

**You're probably aware - but as I learned, spalted maple happens when the tree falls and moisture starts to creep in and the wood gets a fungus. If it is milled quickly enough, you are left with a really cool pattern with dark lines in the wood. If you wait too long, after a few months the tree rots and the wood is garbage. I sanded the heck out of the wood and used 3 coats of tung oil to really bring out the cool pattern.

2 coats of tung oil on, 1 to go:

Shelf assembly complete and ready for installation:


A do-it-yourself spalted maple shelf with industrial piping. A nice addition to the bathroom: