Seeing as I find myself suddenly in need of a coffee table, I figure, hey, why not just build one instead of buying one that I would probably only half like anyway. So onwards with a new project on the Workbench, my coffee table.

This is just a quick pic of the pile of parts for my new coffee table. I have a feeling I'll need some more things but here's what I have to start. The furry bit at the bottom is one of my cats Pfeffer-Nusse. He won't be part of the coffee table.

Except for a few small pieces that may have been missed during cleanup, here's what currently remains of my old coffee table. Since the top and bottom sections seem to have escaped the carnage reasonably intact I'll be incorporating at least part of them into my new design. The furry bit at the top is my other cat, Z. He won't be part of the table either. Cost: Free

To make the frame of the new table I chose 1 1/2" slotted angle 1/8" steel. I currently have 4 6' lengths of it. Cost: $12:50 ea

This steel mesh just looked really cool at Home Depot so I decided that I should get some and use it as the lower shelf of the coffee table. 24" x 24" expanded steel mesh. Cost: $17.50

This is a bag of what's going to hold it all together, 8 5/16" x 1" carriage bolts and lock nuts.

Since I'd rather not get little metal bits all over the place I took my trusty portable workbench and headed out onto the balcony to do some sawing. I chose the hacksaw over the dremel for this project for the simple fact that cutting steel with a dremel is a fairly noisy operation...and I couldn't find my ear plugs. So I took 3 of the 6' long angled steel pieces and cut them up into 2' lengths. Which, for you math whizzes, would give me 9 2' lengths with 1 6' length left over. I think this hacksaw, including the blade, is leftover from WW2.

Then, on to the filing. Didn't want to slice my hands, or anything else, up with sharp metal edges. A simple metal file was used for this. I'd rather not count, nor even recall, the number of neighbours that walked by and asked me to do their nails while I was at it. *grumble*

Gratuitous shot of my nuts.

The moment of truth. Did I measure and cut straight? Time to bolt these puppies together!

The bottom shelf of my coffee table is coming together. 4 of the 2' lengths of angled steel form a square and the steel mesh just drops right in there to be bolted on at the same time. Sweet eh? The electrical equipment in the background there will not be part of my coffee table. Those pieces are for my den.

The plan was for the mesh to drop right in there anyway. Apparently the mesh was not symmetrical, which lead me to perform a quick hacksaw modification to get the square peg in the round hole. *grin*

After some quick surgery the mesh dropped right in there to be bolted together with the rest of the angled steel forming the bottom shelf of my coffee table.

Seeing as I don't really want this bottom shelf to be sitting directly on the floor I figured  I needed some feet of some kind. I picked up these wheels during one of my lunch breaks while cruising a nearby mall. They hold up to 50 lbs so they should be sufficient.

So I got out my trusty springy clamps, clamped the corner together, and removed the the bolt to put the first wheel on.

Unfortunately the hole that the bolt fit into perfectly was a little too small to fit the wheel mount. This requires some delicate power tool adjustment.

Oh, safety first and all that. Nice glasses eh? Thank-you high school welding class.

After the first adjustment I came to the realization that I should charge my drill battery more often.

After some further percussion persuasion the wheel mount was in place.

Hmm, the wheel fits...more or less. It doesn't swivel as well as it should though.

Further problems were discovered with this method as well. The wheel mount obviously doesn't secure the grill, and the wheel mount is slightly mangled from trying to make it fit properly. This needs to be rethought. It's now starting to rain on me so I'll have to fix this problem another day. RUN AWAY!

After competing with the rain for weeks I was finally able to get outside and finish up the little bit of hacksaw work that was left. Four one foot lengths needed to be cut for the vertical pieces of the coffee table. After cutting those pieces I once again broke out my trusty file and smoothed off all of those rough edges at the ends of each length of steel. Each end was quality tested by the little blue mouse under the careful supervision of Z.

More to come soon, so stay tuned!