Handmade Designer Metal Table

Tom was doing a little window shopping a few years back in Taos New Mexico. As he surveyed some of the shops and art galleries he noticed a theme of “metal art”. Of course, when he returned home he began to think how he could duplicate some of the tables and art work he saw. Some of the metal goods ran into the thousands of dollars if one wanted to purchase.

Here is an example of a few of the pieces he saw:

Tom came back to his shop and built a table to resemble the one he had seen in Taos. The top and center section of Tom’s table are both 1/8″ steel material. He rolled the rings for the top and center section out of 3/16″ steel material. He rolled the rings first and then cut out plate to match the size of the rings. He then welded around the perimeter and sanded the edges off using a belt grinder. He then had the top and bottom “dishes”. The rest of the table is 1/2″ X 1″ steel rectangle tubing. He also ran those pieces through the ring roller to create the arch legs. The most difficult part was lining up the legs to insure a level top. Tom spaced the legs on the outside using a set of dividers to space the legs on the outside of the metal table. On the center section he used dividers to cut the circle up into thirds, kind of like a pie, into three equal parts to measure where the legs would be evenly spaced. He tack welded the pieces together before welding the entire project together.

Final touches included using a DA Sander to polish the steel. Tom stained the table with stain with a polyurithaine base.

Tom used a Shop Outfitters 238 Ring Roller.