Something a little different.... Finished up with a round picnic table today and delivered it to a facility that will hot dip galvanize it for me. The top "spoked wagon wheel" will support a 1-1/4 thick white Carrara marble top. There will be a 12" center hole with a bollard post supporting a copper lamp in the center of the table top. Seating will be on the three curved plates that will have a matching 3" thick piece of white oak.
They'll need a fork truck to set it in place, and it will never leave that place again! Does marble really stand up to the weather? It's a relatively soft stone......
Outdoor marble can degrade a bit (surface will dull), but a picnic table probably doesn't need to have a 50 year lifespan. Sealing the surface will help, as will choosing slabs with fewer inclusions and a tighter grain. I actually like the feel of aged marble. It feels much softer and less cold, IMHO.
The marble was spec'd by the architect and restaurant owner..... The owner used to go with concrete tops at his other locations... My table base will be strong enough to handle whatever they want to throw at it.... The design allows for easy removal and replacement..... Fastened to my frame with RTV.... No screws The tops (6 tables) will probably see more damage from people carving their initials in the marble... We'll see... 50 years from now I'll make a point of stopping by and checking them out..... I know the table frames will look a lot nicer than my frame will be in 50 years... As an example.... The tables will be set on a poured concrete patio... To insure the rough concrete surface won't abrade through the galvanized coating protecting the steel, all of the feet mounting plates are 1/2" thick T304 stainless steel....:fingerscrossed: Edit..... No one will probably notice the extra step taken to put a slight chamfer on both the entry and exit side of the hole....:wink:
Thanks Chuck..... To chamfer or not to chamfer...... That is the question.... There are far nobler men than me who prefer a fillet (of beef):drool
Solid white oak, not laminated.... Here is a picture of the last one made as a "traditional" picnic table for the same client with the marble installed but before the oak seating was added... Made 2 of them 14' long each.... They ordered the wrong size sun umbrella so a custom SS grommet was made to adapt to the smaller post...
Thanks, I was just curious. Back in the early 90's when I was building houses we used oak LVL occasionally. Impervious to weather and you can mill it like regular wood although it a little tougher on the equipment than solid wood. But, then again, oak is tough on tools too. I remember a 150 year old farmhouse we demolished that had oak 2X4 (true 2X4's, not the current 1.5X3.5) that ran from the footers all the way to the roofline of the second story. Never saw studs that long before. We wore out several saw blades cutting them into pieces that we could use in the new house. Looking forward to the finished product. As always, that's some fine workmanship on those frames.
My current house was built before WWII the same way.... Real 2" x 4" out of oak..... can't drive a nail into them without first pre-drilling.... They must get harder with age...
We had a 1940 home in Dallas, framed in redwood. I had to pre-drill for nails/screws and I burned up a circular saw blade cutting 4 joists.
I've destroyed power tools on multiple kinds of woods. As I recall, old redwood was not hard, but perhaps very dense. It slowed the circular saw down to a motor-eating crawl. Old oak heats saw blades up to warping temperatures. CD
The nice thing about redwood was that I never had to worry about termite damage on the frame of the house... apparently the brothers of the woman who built the house owned a lumber yard and gave her the best they could find. We also lucked out with the Haldane that was used to treat the lower framing and crawlspace. I was told that I had the best of all worlds there It was a stellar termite treatment, but it was also very damaging to the PEOPLE who lived in the home for the first few years after application. We got the benefits of that treatment with none of the life-shortening exposure! I still didn't like crawling around down there, though, and used every mask and barrier I could, along with a long shower after spending time down there.