Egg Table

Sorry. It’s been a long time since my last post and for that I can only blame work. A bit of a rubbish excuse I suppose, given that one of my aims for this blog was to provide an outlet to get my mind off what I do for a living. Sometimes it’s difficult to do though, isn’t it? There’s no recipe this time around, but hopefully people who own an Egg can see from the following that there is fun to be had without even lighting any charcoal…

When we got it, the Egg came with a Nest on wheels which was pretty handy; we wheeled it indoors when we weren’t using it and out again when we were. However, after we moved house from Brixham by the sea in South Devon to the heart of the West Midlands (don’t ask) a more permanent solution was needed.

A lot of blokes of my kind of age have a Dad that knows how to do things. My Dad knows how to do MANY things. He has a large workshop in which he houses a lot of tools and loves nothing more than to use both to make stuff. I am not without tools and a shed of my own, but this felt like the kind of project that would be more satisfying when completed with the help of the right sort of chap. Dad fitted the bill perfectly.

I hatched a plan.

I read a few posts and looked at a few YouTube videos. I found the plans that Big Green Egg publish and used them as a starting point. I measured the height of our kitchen worktops and used that and the standard depth to work out the size of the top. I got to my parents’ house with a rough drawing and some measurements sketched out with the goal to make a useable table which was functional. Although both practical people, I don’t think Dad and I had it in mind that we were going to be making a beautiful bit of furniture. This was definitely going to be more like advanced Year 11 woodwork than a Chippendale’s (not those ones) with an eye more on function than form.

The first job was to glue up the top with pine tongue and groove boards. We used five 150mm planks to give a finished width of 650mm, about the same as a normal kitchen worktop. Plenty of wood glue went in the joints and then clamped up the whole thing up for a few hours while we tackled the main body of the table. Despite my plans, we definitely had a period to begin with which would, in days gone by, have been characterised by us pushing our trilbies back on our heads, putting the kettle on and lighting our pipes while we had a good think and a look at the pile of pressure treated rough-sawn gravel boards and fence posts we had. One of us might have jabbed our pipe stem at the other to make a well-though out point whilst opining “you know, that might just work”. Picture, if you will, the equivalent of the engineering excellence of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, or Barnes Wallace, or David Brown. As everyone knows, thinking and looking at length are the cornerstones of all successful DIY projects. Measurements were taken and calculations made about the height of the shelf to ensure the top of the Egg would be high enough. Once the component pieces were cut to size, it was a pretty quick job to screw it all together. We clamped the bits in place and used decking screws; the ends were done first and then connected with the long rails. It stood firm and didn’t wobble.

On to the top. The glue had set and it looked the business. Dad used a router with a straight-cutting bit and a metal radius arm to cut the circle out in 2 or 3 passes. Beforehand we had another ponder about how much bigger the hole should be than the Egg, given the temperature the ceramic gets to. We settled on a 15mm gap which seems to be fine. A LOT of measuring was done to make sure the centre of the hole was in the right place relative to where we bolted the now wheel-less nest to the shelf. We screwed blocks to the underside of the top so they butted up to the rails and stiles of the frame so we could screw through those to secure it with no screw heads showing.

The top got 3-4 coats of clear exterior varnish and the table itself a coat of grey Dulux Weathershield. Probably needed a second, but cooking needed to be done.

It’s stood for nearly 5 years now and is brilliant. Having the prep space is really handy and the shelf has plenty room for charcoal, cooking surfaces, starter chimney and other paraphernalia. I bought a generic BBQ cover for it from Homebase which isn’t perfect, but is good enough. A key modification was the addition of a bottle opener on one leg. If I was going to do it again, I probably would have gone for more sturdy timber for the top. It’s split along the joins at the ends a bit (nothing catastrophic) so thicker timber might have given more glue surface to prevent it – maybe scaffolding boards planed and sanded smooth would do the job. The finished top is 1350mm x 650mm so it wouldn’t be astronomically expensive to get an off-cut of granite to replace the timber, although getting the hole cut would no doubt add to the cost. The table frame is certainly sturdy enough to take the weight.

This was, all in all, a marvelous project to complete together and has left me with a great set of memories of the day of manufacture. I think we allowed ourselves a congratulatory beer afterwards and every time I use the Egg I am reminded of my old man, which is lovely.

Happy Father’s Day Dad!