I was designing a outdoor table as a present but couldn’t locate the Merbau fence panel we’d wanted to use as the table top.
So whilst searching for other suitable Merbau boards to use we came across H4 sienna pine sleepers 200 x 50 x 1800 the perfect size for our table top. It’s rich red colour and rough rustic look was the clincher.
We selected the 4 straightest boards we could and set them aside for a week to dry out and acclimatise in situ.
Added in two palings to act as bracing for what would a very heavy tabletop.
Chose our legs
Picked up our fasteners and we were ready to go.
To start off the build we laid out our boards picking the faces and orientations we liked the best, numbered and marked them all, and got set for plenty of sanding. You can really see the difference in the finish between the rough sawn sleepers and how nice they come up once sanded to 80 and then 120 grit.
With plenty of measuring, pre-drilling, spacing and clamping we finally had our top complete.
Some more measuring pre-drilling, some very heavy lifting and plenty of hammering we had our legs on as well.
Some cinching up of washers n nuts from
underneath and a final sand of the top sides and rounding over edges….. It was done.
Time to complete was around 4-5 hours for two taking it easy with plenty of breaks.
Costings are always of interest, and were as follows:
4 x sleepers @ $15.31ea = $61.24
2 x legs @ $49.00 ea = $98.00
8g 50mm outdoor timber screws = $5.40
8 x 1/4” x 2 1/2” bolts, washers and nuts @ $0.56 each = $4.48
1/3 sheet sander, sanding block and sand paper were on hand.
TOTAL = $169.12 ($161.93 PowerPass)
Hope you like our new table!
Fire away with any questions or comments!
