DIY Sugar Skull Table - Cable Spool Reel Projects

Simple cable reel woodworking project, finished off with a Candy Sugar skull router carving in the center. You can find spools on industrial estates and parks all round the country if youre lucky and get there before I do :) A fairly easy woodworking project and complements the pallet skull chairs.

Skull chair video    • DIY Skull Chair - Pallet Projects  

This actually used up two cable reels, just the way it worked as id taken one to bits previously and the sides were floating around getting in my way, i made the top first and was wondering what to make the legs out of. Kept it simple and just screwed the top to an existing reel.

Sand and fill your drum, i had 3 decent sized holes and 4 bolt holes to plug up. I found some decent offcuts of cherry lying around and cut and sanded them into sizes that covered the holes. Lay these on the wood and draw around them. Using a router and a 10mm double flute i then routered out the outline to near the depth of the block, about 12mm. Used titebond 3 as its a good, water resistant and very strong glue. Tap the block into place, one of them was really tight so i also used a couple of screws to hold it in place while it was drying. Once dry screws removed and then an all over sanding with the angle grinder.

Your top should be ready for the design. Select a design you like and using your resizer program print out the design onto standard paper. I use pva glue to attach the design and leave it for a few hours to dry. Using a 10 degree cnc bit to do the outline and then a 3mm upward spiral to clean out remains. I decided to spray this one rather than burning it, i used a can of cheap auto car black spray paint to do this. Allow to dry and then sand it back.

I applied a burn using the propane roofing torch, its a great and very quick method of bringing out the grain.
As these are going outside i used yacht varnish for the finish, 1st coat is watered down with white spirit which carries it deep into the timber, unfortunately it really eats up the yacht varnish and i could only get one coat on the two chairs and one table out of one tin.

Music with thanks.
"Loopster" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...