Cassette Coffee Table

The project was to create a coffee table sized cassette for my son's new flat, (it would be a surprise present), He was a great fan of 'Guardians of the Galaxy' when it came out so I thought I'd personalise it and make it look like Starlords Tape from the movie. So I started with a few pix off the internet and of course a real cassette which I've still got loads of from the '70's.

sheets of birch plywood 18mm, 15mm, 12mm, 9mm & 1.5mm, I think I got one of each.

I started with the middle piece of ply in two halves as I wouldn't be able to drill the holes for the 'tags' or spokes straight. I cut and glued up a load of squares so i could turn the tags on a lathe. drilled the holes and glued them in then glued the pieces together. I'd started routing some of the other bits with my laminate trimmer and homemade compass and then cut a load of 1.3mm strips to make the tape, staining each piece brown as i glues and stapled them to the carcass.

Started cutting the circles that would later become the legs and shaping the inner rings around the tape wheel with a power file. The circles for the legs were rough cut with a jigsaw and would all be glued together and then turned circular on the lathe.

Glued all the pieces I'd finished cutting and hand routed the lettering in the top, it was definitely looking like a cassette. I should have taken more out of the middle to make a it a bit lighter it was a little heavy looking back.

cut the 1.5mm border to go on the top, glued down with handy stage weights and clamps. I was going to coat it with tonkinois varnish but decided on a water based one instead, it was all going to be under glass anyhow. The bottom shelf was suspended on studding, (which I also used to attach the legs and came out better than expected as it looks like its floating. I made the screw heads in the corners 18mm and sat them on top so the glass would have something to sit on and 3d printed pieces to fit in the screw head slots to glue to the glass. That's about it, I've got a 3d model in Autocad of the cassette if anyone is interested, I'll share for free. Oh and my son was very pleased with it.