building project help!

topic posted Tue, May 8, 2007 - 12:39 PM by  Yuliya
Heeey everyone!

I'm trying to build a tank table for a chill out space at a party and for burning man....but the most furniture building I have ever done is putting together some Ikea stuff. I have friends with power drills/tools n things, but I'm kind of not sure if my design is going to work. I was just wonderin if someone could check it out and let me know if something looks horribly wrong. One of the most important things about this is that it has to be relatively easy to move and travel with.
The idea is to make a narrow but long and tall table with a border hanging over....imagine a bar counter...so instead of having legs its kind of a rectangular box. I was thinking something like 70 inch L, 12 inch W, and 36 inch H. I was gonna use 1 inch thick plywood for this part. And then I was going tt use 2 inch thick wood for the border, which is going to hang over the edge 8 inches on all sides. And for the tank part...I was basically going to make a box out of 1/4 thick plywood 68 inch L, 10 inch W, and 10 inch H...cover it with water tight coating. Thats where the water goes.
So the tank would be attached to the border, so I could just set it inside the base. So then when I traveled with it, I would just have the four pieces making up the base, and then the tank and the border would be one piece.
So then I wanted to figure out how much water would be needed, and it turns out that 7000 cubic inches is like 78 gallons of water which is about 650 pounds!!!
Did I calculate that wrong>?
Will plywood even hold that much weight>?
Am I even going in the right direction>?
posted by:
Yuliya
SF Bay Area
  • Re: building project help!

    Wed, May 9, 2007 - 7:15 AM
    Plywood will take in water if not sealed correctly The seams will need to be filled in with some kind of extra strong adhesive becuase the weight of the water is going to push on the seams.

    I like plexi glass better than plywood, It would alrealy be water tight. You would just have to work with the seams then. I would place an extra L shaped bracket on the outside/inside of the corners where the two pieces of Plexi meet for suport
    Plexi takes a chemical bonding to glue it to another. Then I would use a bead of silicone just to be sure it was water tight

    I will see if I still have the link of the chemical
    • Re: building project help!

      Thu, May 10, 2007 - 8:44 AM
      Hmmm cool....and I can just drill through plexi glass like wood?
      Also, do you think that the design that I have would support so much weight in water? any way to find out> ?
      • Re: building project help!

        Thu, May 10, 2007 - 10:05 AM
        The only thing I can think of is....the sides might bluge due to the weight of the water. You just have to place some out side braces on it (like a big band around it and I think you will be ok). Yes, you can drill through Plexi but have the correct type of drills and blades, or it will melt it or split it. Back up all holes with the sillicone.

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