INDUSTRIAL SPOOL TABLE

I love the industrial look, and the first time I saw a table made out of an industrial spool (which was years ago!), I knew I wanted to make one. There's a lot of construction going on where I live, so every now and then I would drive past a construction site a bit slower than usual, keeping an eye out for that perfect-sized spool. for a while I thought i'd found it, though closer inspection disguised as a dog walk revealed that it wasn't in the best condition. I also had my mother on the case, who would tip me every now and then about potential spools in the area. It even got to the point where I'm pretty sure I wrote about half a page about my industrial spool table visions in a letter to Graeme, diagram included. And a couple weeks ago, I finally found it. So one Friday night at 11, I got Graeme to come with me to pick it up. It turns out the one I had my eye on was a lot smaller than I thought it was, and we were about to just head home again, until I noticed a larger spool lying in a nearby ditch. It had some imperfections and some industrial staples and cement on it, but it was the perfect size, so we threw it in the car and headed home. (We felt like complete outlaws, even though the spool had been lying in a ditch outside of the construction site for a long time and was probably just going to get thrown away anyway.)

The next day, Graeme removed the staples and gave it a good blast with the power washer, and the cement bits came off relatively easily. The spool then hung out in the garage, drying for 5 days, before it was ready for a round with the sander. The original plan was to add some wheels to the spool so that it'd be easy to move it, but we decided that it wasn't really necessary as the spool was a  lot lighter than we anticipated. So instead of wheels, we attached three rubber doors stoppers to the bottom to protect the floor. I also had grand plans of staining it using the same stain I used for my headboard, but Graeme did such a good job (and even got a boo boo!) on the sanding and I liked the color of the wood so much that I decided to leave it. And there it is, I finally have my industrial spool table!