Mini Tables

A while ago I got a load of old Lacie hard drive enclosures, 1 or more of disks inside had died and it fell to a friend of mine to extract any good hard drives and I was offered the carcases.

mmmm...free Junk 

Looking them over I figured there was some nice aluminium and a few fans might be worth having.
Having them knocking around In my lounge the large ones instantly found use as a small  tables, so I poshed them up a bit:

Classy! (yes, that is a plater as a coaster!)

The top is some reclaimed 1x4" white wood (spruce) planed all round board wich has been stained and then varnished with some polyurethane ultra-hard varnish.

The case was sprayed with some satin black rattle-can paint (no primer, just straight down on the original paint, it seams to be gripping really well). The T slots in the edge are a challenge to paint but many light coats from multiple angles give the desired result, and they tend to be in the shade and hence not show up too badly (I thought I had got these but the camera flash shows them up pretty bad, I struggle to even see this with a torch IRL.)

Bottom View

The top is held on with some 20mm x 20mm x 1.5mm aluminium angle. I got this from screwfix (21869) wich is far cheaper than the first place I found it (home base, altho the hombase stuff did apear to be anodised unlike screwfix's plane vanilla aluminium). Not wanting to change the outside I guled the aluminium angle to the case with Araldite metal epoxy. I prepped the surface with sand paper and a stanley knife to try to give a good key. I also drilled the aluminium so that the glue extrudes though the holes kinda forming rivits. This was then allowed to cure for 24 hours to ensure a good full set on the epoxy before the wooden top is screwed down.

The top is just screwed down with ordinary wood screws, be careful not to over tighten them (I got bit keen at one point and was greeted with a loud crack, whoops!)

In it's natural Habitat.

One of the things I like about these is they are just the right size to hold a cup of tea (if you are lounging on the sofa you cant quite reach the floor with ease) and fit under the arm of the sofa (out of the way, less chance of kicking your brew across the floor!).