Calling All the Wood Lovers! :P
by
Grace
4 Materials
$2.49
5 Days
Easy
I had picked this industrial cable spool up nearly 10 years ago. I think someone picked it up and had the same idea as mine, but never was able to do anything, and then perhaps threw it away as he or she was moving away. It was sitting by the curb with some cobwebs.You see something like this often, but you don't see something this well made. I kept it in my garage waiting for the right time and right place. I felt guilty at the same because there was no room in my house. Then recently! My college son was moving into an apartment of his own for the first time and when I showed this to him, he was delighted.
I first cleaned it with one of those Wal-Mart's wipes, but scrubbed it hard, and rinsed it off with damped cloth. And then once dried, I went over again with alcohol damp rag and cleaned it again.
My son and I got to work to clean this rusty hardware. We used steelwool and for some tough rust spot, I just used sand paper. I have a feeling that some might yell at me for doing that? Ha...ha. Sorry, I really didn't know what I was doing. I just wanted to get rid of the rust so badly.
Hey, but it got the job done. :D
That's my son sanding the spool and this is his first time ever working with a wood project, and my conclusion? "I must teach everything I know to this young man!" I think he did a fantstic job!
I thought I would use weathered oak stain, but the young man wanted golden oak stain, so I agreed.
We covered the hardware and stained it together.
I told him that I thought it would be cool to put some stencil project and this is what he chose: Earth C-137. It's from a TV show I know nothing about, and it's supposed to be the address of the earth in that show. I thought it was so cool and so awesome. I helped him to lay out the stencil and I realized with the cheap stencil I got, he had to work backwards. Regardless, it came out so sharp! I did not think it was necessary to stress it. Once dried, we went over it with polyurethane and even over the hardware. We coated the top 3 times, using 220 sand paper and then steelwooled the top, but we gave the rest of the body only 2 coats.
The bottom had some cracks and my son was worried about scratching the floor, so I got some wooden discs and chair leg protectors, flipped the bottom over, we glued the discs and once dries, drilled the pilot holes and then nailed the leg protectors in.
It's done. He says he did almost all of it all by himself. XP
It found a humble home, perfect for a college student's first apartment. The spool was so well made, having 2 layers on top and the bottom, we didn't have to do anything additional other than sanding, staining, and varnishing.
That's all there was. It wasn't fancy or extremely fantastic, but it sure was a bonding moment....for me, and was a growing independent moment for him.
Comments
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4 of 8 comments
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Love it! Add a little nautical rope around the trunk to finish it off...:)
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I'm with Cheryl about adding nautical rope....adds a manly touch for a young man's apartment. Great job. Thanks for sharing your awesome project.
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Thank you for the kind words. :)
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