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Issue 43

The Small Spaces Issue

Buy Your First Home
Southern BBQ, City Style
A-Frame House
Bikes of Portland

Inspector Gadget - Reel-To-Reel Coffee Table

Two ways to breathe new life into antique machinery

There's something magical about old apparatuses, hand-cranked devices from the prewar era, reel-to-reel tape players from the 1970s, and such. Let these two projects inspire you to nab that delightful but defunct artifact at the flea market and turn it into a showpiece.

by Dennis Ferguson

Photos by Markham Johnson

When the family’s analog eight-track tape deck died, our son begged us to keep the corpse, hoping that one day techies of the future might resurrect it. Meanwhile, we needed a coffee table and thought the piece might be a suitable base. And it was.

Using the hacksaw, we cut the legs from 3/4” square steel tubing, and filed the edges smooth and even.
It was necessary to temporarily remove the back panel of the deck so we could get in there to attach the legs. Then we drilled through-holes in the tubing and in the chassis and secured them with hex-head cap screws (because they look cool). We connected it all together with a lock washer and nut on the other end.
Some might say that the legs look rusted. We prefer to call it a “carefully acquired patina”, but in any case, a coat of clear Krylon would prevent any tarnishing.
Since you can’t put the glass (or Plexi) right on the legs, we started experimenting and discovered that rubber cane tips fit nicely over the leg tops. They also had the perfect tackiness to keep the glass in place.
Did I mention the deck is heavy? Hard rubber casters with a threaded shaft make it easier (i.e., possible) to move. We affixed them to the legs with two standard square nuts per caster. Perfectionists will want to drill and tap the legs and attach a set screw to one (or both) of the nuts, but that struck us as overkill. Our eight-track table has survived three moves, and like vinyl, it’s just sitting pretty, waiting for the revival.