Drilling Holes In The Sky: Glass Singer Tabletop

This has been a long time in gestation, but I finally completed my glass tabletop.

Way back in November last year, I found this cool Singer sewing machine base at a local market. I think these things look fabulous, and this one works very well; the foot pedal turns the wheel easily with minimal squeaking. I thought I could use a piece of glass we had in the house as a top for it. Of course, that glass turned out to be half an inch too small to fit, so another plan was called for.

I figured I could make a piece of stained glass, and get a wooden surround made in order to support it and affix it to the base. So I designed the glass panel to use the same shapes as the ironwork has in the sides, and in the flywheel. The colours were chosen to match the rug and other furniture in our living room.

Somewhere along the way, friend Mark offered to build the wooden surround for me. Yay Mark! He has a great workshop and we were able to get it built in two separate nights. Here you can see we have cut the wood and it is clamped together. There is wood glue and biscuit joints holding it all together.

Here it is after sanding the whole thing, and Mark is affixing the support bars that will hold the glass. I bought two sheets of plate glass to make a sandwich; one on the bottom to counter any sagging that may occur in my stained glass, and one for the top to make a smooth surface.

Here Mark is checking a measurement before making the drill holes to attach the base. He did all the real woodwork, although I did make some biscuit joint holes and did a lot of sanding! Power tools, I love them.

This is the first time we put it all together! The wood is still very light in colour; it's probably still covered in dust at this point. I chose to use Walnut after seeing some of Mark's furniture he made, and Mark sent me home with a bottle of Tung oil to finish it with. It makes a beautifully deep finish in the wood.