LEGO Table

Project LEGO® Table

My son's new LEGO table

First a caveat - I am not a professional woodworker. There is a 100% chance that there are better ways to do about every step of what I did to make this table. Having said that, I think it turned out well.

We've wanted to do something with my son's Legos for quite some time. I saw some ideas on Pinterest based on Ikea tables which inspired me to design and build this one.

Luckily we had run across some LEGO base plates for sale at Target and I cleaned them out of stock (in both locations near us). I also picked up some plastic bins that I thought would work well for the storage underneath.

 

 First I sketched out a design and some measurements. Even though the bins could be pulled out and spare pieces swept into them, I thought the addition of little holes would make a significant psychological interest/incentive to clean up (more fun to drop LEGOs in the holes):

Next I purchased some lumber. I picked up kiln dried 2x6 boards and cut them to 4 foot lengths:

Planed the edges down (actually I used a jig on my table saw):

Glued & clamped them together (this is known as a "glue up" - I alternated the curve of the grain up/down to mitigate warping, but it didn't 100% prevent it):

Dried overnight and planed/sanded smooth:

I marked, drilled, then used my jigsaw to cut the holes. And did a lousy, horrible job of it - the edges were all chewed up and unfixable:

I had decided it would be easier for me to use metal pipe for the base. Since this is an inside piece and my wife wanted it "dark" I went with black iron pipe, which is cheaper than galvanized. Still, black iron pipe and fittings in 1" size is expensive stuff. This was the biggest cost sink of the whole project:

In the picture above, you can see there are some metal pieces next to the holes. I decided that the only way to cover up the ugly sides of those holes was to make some kind of flange or liner. Unfortunately, such a thing in the size I needed (since I'd already cut holes) did not exist. My best option was something called a "Hawse Pipe" which is the fitting in a boat hull that an anchor rope/chain runs through but they didn't make any in the right size. So I thought about buying a welder and making a flange with a lip, however after visiting the local steel/metal yard and getting them to cut me some rect-tube in a size that was close (and modifying the holes slightly), I decided not to put a lip/flange on them. I did have to hit them with the grinder to get all the sharp edges off. All in all, I'm fairly happy with the way they turned out.

We conditioned and stained the top and bottom... and decided that I didn't like the way the stain looked on the top, so I sanded it all off (60, 100, 150, 220 grit) on the top only and started over with a different stain. Then three coats of urethane, sanding in between with 220 or 400 grit paper. Much better:

It took a bit of figuring, but I decided the easiest way for me to make rails for the plastic storage bins was a flat piece of stock and hanger bolts:

Next steps were screwing the base on  gluing the hole-liner metal pieces in:

Then gluing the lego boards on, and putting non-scratch furniture pads on the feet.  The final result is pretty cool looking, in my humble opinion. And my son loves it.

Now, if any of y'all reading this *are* indeed experts and have some tips - I'd love to hear them.

LEGO, the LEGO logo, the Minifigure, DUPLO, LEGENDS OF CHIMA, NINJAGO, MINDSTORMS and MIXELS are trademarks of the LEGO Group.
©2014 The LEGO Group. All rights reserved. Use of this site signifies your agreement to the terms of use.

Sous Vide cooker

Being a self-declared foodie, I decided to build a sous vide (French for under vacuum - water oven/bath cooking... Google it). After quite a bit of research on the interwebs (what else is new?) I decided on a design. Not to get ahead of myself, but it works like a champ and makes some INCREDIBLE food. Cooking large brisket and ribs in the ice chest, and smaller stuff like steaks in a pot on a hotplate. I'm going to try and use it to temper some chocolate for truffles next.

Final product:

Parts were roughly as follows:

• Inlet Male Power Socket with Fuse Switch 10A 250V 3 Pin IEC320 C14
• Dual Digital Display PID Temperature Controller
• 25A SSR DC-AC Solid State Relay w/ Heatsink (you can find PIC, SSR, and heatsink combos as well)
• High temperature(100'C) 1.85L/Min (29GPH) mini DC12V. Food grade (you need to circulate the water to keep temperatures even... I wired this into an existing 12V adaptor I had)
• Leviton 125-Volt SmartLock Pro Slim Non-Tamper-Resistant Duplex GFCI Receptacle
• Another, normal (non-GFCI) receptacle from Home Depot
• AGPtek Stainless Steel PT100 RTD Thermistor Sensor Probe (Temperature Rang: -20~420°C) (you can get cheaper ones, but they're less accurate)
• A project box from Radio Shack
• Various wires
• A fuse (to go in the fused switch socket above)
• Later, after my first thermo probe went wonky, I replaced it and got some rubber tubing to sleeve it in
• A power cord (I had lying around) that fit into the fused switch socket above

I also wanted to be able to cook with some versatility (smaller pots as well as large/bulk items), so I picked up:

• Allied Precision Ind 742G Bucket Heater With Guard, 1000-Watts
• Aroma Hot Plate (not exactly this, but almost identical from Target)

Wiring is as follows:

1. Power goes into switch, 
2. through fuse, 
3. out into GFCI, 
4. a line out of GFCI into PID 
5. and another set out with positive going into the switched (regular) outlet 
6. and hot/negative into the switched side of the SSR
7. Thermo probe connected to PID,
8. and PID output/trigger for SSR runs into the SSR

Wiring on the fused switch

Top level shot of wiring

Close up of wiring

Power supplied to PID Controller

Wiring of thermo probe and SSR to PID Controller - your probe may be different!

Wiring looking from switch toward GFCI

Another top level shot of wiring, turned around

Fused switch outlet

Final - note this is a later pic with the tubing-sleeved thermo probe

The ice chest and immersion heater. Because I vacuum bag all the food, I'm not worried about BPA leaching.