Solid Surface Coffee Table

So, here it is! I have lurked on this website for years and have gone from professional maker with a laser and CNC to a full time police officer only making things as a hobby...

My girlfriend and I have just brought a house and in celebration I was allowed to make a coffee table for our new home! It is made from Corian solid surface which is commonly used as kitchen countertops with a seamless finish. Matte grey acrylic and chrome hairpin legs have made this a very heavy but beautiful one of a kind table!

Please enjoy and let me know if you have questions!

Corian (this will prove hard to source for most as you need to be a trained fabricator with the stuff before they will sell you any of it!)

M3 and M5 screws

Brass threaded inserts

CNC router, Mine is 8x4ft

Hairpin legs I picked up from ETSY

Fustrating for some, Helpful for me.

I have quite an imagination whereby on long drives i have the ability to design whole projects in my head without needing to use 3d software for most elements. I had used Corel Draw for the 2d design and vectors for cutting the parts along with Mach 3 CNC software and Vetric...

I have attached an image of the pattern I had designed in Vetric after much trawling the web for inspiration. For the table its self it measures 500x1000 mm and I have had to add a 13.5mm boarder. This for two reasons, one of which is that the material is 12mm thick so the sides could be added but an additional 1.5mm to hide the acrylic edge once that is also installed underneath!

Just a quick 3D mock up to ensure that parts will be cut out correctly. This can show where you have issues in your cut lines.

Other simple mistakes that can show up here will be using the outside of the cut line instead of the inside etc. Once all checked out its time to cut!

Not much to see here except an hour wait for it to cut the parts out! enjoy the photos! I had added another 1.5mm to the outer boarder so when i put the sides on a had a slight skirt i could trim down with a standard router so its silky smooth!

So, for people that are not aware, Corian and other solid surface companies pride themselves on making materials where once the edges are bonded they look seamless with no visible joints. This gave my table the appearance that its cut from a solid block rather than adding sheet material to the sides for adding depth.

The bonding agent is essentially a liquid form of the sheet you are using. Once dry you route it plush and then sand it back so its seamless.

The little dimples you see in the material are the brass insert holes in order to be able to screw the acrylic directly into the surface without using glue. I did this for two reasons, the first being that i can change the colour if i want to and also if something happens like a drink or other stuff gets stuck on the plastic its super easy to clean!

As mentioned before, I have bonded the edges and sanded them back. Normally for kitchen countertops you would go all the way to a 1200+ grit wet sanding session however I used 350 grit dry sanding with a random orbital sander in order to keep a beautiful matte finish which i prefer than it being all shiny.

Not much here just inserting the brass inserts and checking the screws fit!

The legs proved a bit of a technical issue for me, Mainly because the holes that i had on the legs didnt position at all on the table in a way where it wouldn't interfere with the top surface.

That being the case I had to route out custom leg brackets that would then line up with the brass insert holes. Being a bit of a perfectionist I ensured that the leg plate was pocketed and fit well. This step was not stress free!

I had then removed the leg plates from the underside in order to install the acrylic, I drilled this by hand with the help of a laser cut template to ensure that I could position the plastic before the holes were drilled. The grey was also rough cut on the edges so that is why i had the additional 1.5mm on the sides so it cant be seen from the top!

Once this was done I spent a long time screwing it all in and putting the legs on!

So here is the finished table! I hope you enjoy the design.

Happy Making people!