Cigar Band Coffee Table (Complete Project Recap)

[Mark THS]

I happened to be reorganizing some past photos and I came across a folder that I thought would be a great share. I believe I posted this project to Club Stogie a few years back, but with so many new faces, I thought I would share them here.

The concept for this project was spawned mostly out of wanting to foray into woodworking, but at the same time I started planning this project, my brother began building a cigar room in his basement. This quickly turned into a gift for him.

I started the project with a hunt for a neglected antique coffee table. At the time, I was living in Michigan, so the market for great antique furniture is relatively abundant. I was able to locate a petite chippendale style coffee table on Craigslist. The condition was terrible, having been painted lime green sometime many years ago. I wish I had snapped a picture of the table when I bought it- but you'll just have to take my word when I say that this table was in horrible shape. I spent about $60 to purchase it- rough shape, but the tooling marks gave me a good indication that this piece was probably a 1920-1930 era pieces, so at the time it felt like a good deal.

I first started snapping pictures midway through the stripping process of the wood.

Notice the lime green paint on the foot of the table and all of the detail elements that were filled with paint.



I used a fairly common hardware store gel stripper to remove the paint. This meant covering the piece, letting the paint bubble up, and gently scrapping it off.



You can see some of the gel stripper in the picture below. Stinky and messy, but very effective.


I snapped the picture below to show the tedious parts of stripping claw-and-ball feet. There were quite a few hand carved details that werent apparent until the paint had been removed


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[Mark THS]

After the initial stripping process, I was left with a fairly clean piece, but much of the grain was still filled with paint and there was some deep staining from the original finish. Since this was not meant to be a museum restoration, I decided that the best possible finish was going to be achieved by using a wood bleach that opened that grain and allowed me to get a fresher finish.


Below you'll see how the piece looked in the midst of the staining process. The natural wood grain was coming out much clearer


Once again, the feet presenting a big challenge. Lots of detail work and some tedious finishing. I did mark the feet (numbered 1 to 4) and that really helped in the reassembly process later on


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[Mark THS]

With a lot of the cleanup work complete, I spent a lot of time sanding and focusing on the detail elements. A gradual rise in sandpaper grit and a sharp pocketknife gave me some superb results.

I wanted to keep the look classic, so I chose a simple wood stain and proceeded with a typical finish


Another look at the finish process


Once again, these pesky legs added quite a tedious element to the finish. The coloring in the legs varies a lot more in this stage than in others of the finish


The end result was a pretty serviceable refurb, but I still wanted to add a cigar twist to this project-


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[Mark THS]

To any furniture purists- this is where I apologize. This is not a period refurbishment, but a custom band project, so what you might see next is in the eye of the beholder.

I originally saw the use of epoxy for bar tops in college. I'd seen a few guys lay down bottlecaps and pour a layer of two-part epoxy over the top, creating a glasslike finish. That is where the inspiration came from.

Now, I love the look of new cigar bands, and I've used them for many other projects, but what I really wanted for this project was to create the most timeline piece possible. I tracked down a guy in the Detroit area that had a substantial lot of UNUSED antique cigarbands. They were banded with twine, just like that would look like if they showed up in the factory ready for banding. I also found a few clean boxtop inserts, the type very typical with old cigar boxes. I love the look of old cigar bands- lots of reds and golds, which gave this a very uniform look.

I started by laying down a base.


That base was followup with a sparse layer of bands and a layer of epoxy.


I layed down a few more bands and box top inserts above that layer. The general idea between many layers of epoxy is to create depth. The end result will be many layers of 'floating' bands



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[Mark THS]

I'll spare you some of the boring details, but the bands/epoxy layering went on for quite some time..




A nice closeup

[Mark THS]

The end result was a nice smattering of layers and bands, creating a collage of bands and a great mix of colors


After a little cleanup and assembly- here is the end result



And a final shot of it in its final resting place after being gifted to my brother and his cigar room

[EricF]

Thanks for that Mark!!

That was great to see!!!

[Mark THS]

(sorry if all of those pics killed anyones bandwidth )

[celtic250]

Very nice job you did there! Props!!!

[BryanB]

Looks good bro!!

[688sonarmen]

Thanks Mark, I remember this from back in the day

[Bill86]

Damn that is very cool

[kelmac07]

Looks great brother!!

[14holestogie]

Great job. Nice seeing this again.

[Savor the Stick]

Good to see this again. Thanks for re-posting this Mark. Beautiful!

[Remo]

Turned out great, thanks

[Blak Smyth]

Wow that really came out nice. Excellent work!!!

[MrClean]

That is a cool project, the depth and 'floating bands' makes it so interesting! Awesome job Mark.

[irratebass]

Very impressed and thankful for the step by step coverage, great job....how floored was your brother?

[OldDirty]

Very cool project and the final result is quite stunning actually.