To check this I placed the table on my table saw which has a flat top from end to end. Nothing worse than a table that rocks back and forth. The final job was to make sure the legs would be flat. Once that was done, I drille pilot holes in each of the legs then drove the screws through the leg holes and attached them to the live edge top. This way I could butt the legs up to the plywood, then use that to align them on the back, and ensure that the legs are absolutely parallel to one another. Lining up the legs was a bit of a chore because there really are now staight edges, except the ends of the live edge and I didn't want to trust them to give me perfectly parallel leg spacings, so I decided to cut a blank piece of used plywood that was 30 inches long and parallel end to end. I don't thing they would have, but always good to be safe ahead of time than trying to fix a cracked top that has been already finished and prepared ready to use. The purpose of the plywood was to give me a little bit more depth to install the screws that would hold the legs on, and to help ensure the large screws i was using to attach the legs on with would not split the wood. I glued on 4 square pieces of plywood 4x4 inches and painted them black to match the legs. Next I need to prepare the underside of the live edge top. The steel legs turned out perfect and had just the right amount of sheen on them. 2 coats were done on one day, about 6 hours apart and the final coat was sprayed on the next day. The next day I wiped the legs off with a soft cloth to make sure there was no dust on them and sprayed the first of 3 top coats of black satin automotive paint. The can said I could spray on a top coat in 20 minutes, but decided to wait overnight to get a very hard undercoat. The purpose of this is to give the undercoat spray something better to adhere to the steel with. and they were correct and they gave full instructions on what to do.įirst I had to wash all the oil off (obviously), then dry the steel and wipe it thoroughly with an alcohol to make sure all the oil is off, the then finally, with a very fine fabric pad (about 400 grit) I had to scrub the entire steel legs. Maybe not quite a good as what a commercial shop could do, but they told me that once done, my coffee table legs would turn out excellent. Option 2 - Along the way I found a company that sells automotive paint, including black undercoat paint and black satin top coat paint, that I can spray on myself. As it turned out, getting someone to paint these legs satin black, in a timely fashion and something approaching a reasonable cost, was just not happening. Option 1 - Getting the legs painted professionally. I felt a coat of automotive paint would probably last longer that simply going to the hardware store and buying off-the-shelf black spray paint. I knew that I wanted the legs black so my first option was to have one of the car painting shops paint the legs black for me. The legs that I purchases were raw steel with a light coat of oil on them. There was not many choices of steel legs that I could purchase locally, but did find some inverted "V" shaped legs that I liked and that looked very well made. I started off by purchasing ready made steel legs from one of the big box hardware stores rather than trying to make my own. This final video and article are a quick overview of installing some Steel Legs to the coffee table and something I have not worked with in the past, so a whole new experience for me. Some time ago I joined some cuts from a live edge slab of wood to make a somewhat square, live edge coffee table top, then I finished the top with a special version of teak oil called Teak-Olje and both those articles and videos can be found here: Part 1 & Part 2.
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