Guitar Display Table and Cabinet

HilditchGuitars · July 2023

Having spent some time making furniture before my guitar making journey began, I inevitably found myself wanting to combine the two passions into one and came up with a cabinet and a coffee table to display guitars. Plus it gave me space to store more guitars which is never a bad thing right?

I stupidly didn't take any process pics of the cabinet so you'll have to bear with my brief description. But I have some decent pics of the table build. I hope you're sitting comfortably...

HilditchGuitars · July 2023

So the cabinet started life as this pile of Redwood Pine from my local builder's merchant...

The base frame is 45mmx45mm leg sections cut to 600mm with 45mmx22mm aprons attached by mortice and tenon joints. The total width/depth is 500mm x 500mm
The sides are 45mmx22mm mortice and tenon frames totaling 1200mm x 500mm, with a 12mm rebate to allow for 5mm acrylic windows and a bead.
The front is the same but without the rebate. And the door is the same again, with the rebate for the window. The acrylic is siliconed in as well as the retaining bead.
The back, base and top are made up of 95mmx22mm and fixed with dowels. I trimmed one edge of each side so that when the front frame was attached the stiles would all measure 45mm to give a nice symmetrical corner.

HilditchGuitars · July 2023

Now you may be wondering 'why so big? Guitars are relatively thin'. And here's the cool (in my opinion anyway haha) part... the base ROTATES!

I got a lazy susan bearing set and a BBQ chicken spit motor and began to make the turntable base. The bearing set is fixed to the cabinet base and the ply circle has a centre rod that locates in the aperture of the spit motor, which is mounted underneath.
A set of LED strip lights round the front frame finished it off nicely and provides a great front glow to catch the gloss finish

Motor mounted underneath, with a 2 way extension tucked away for power.

LEDs round the front

HilditchGuitars · July 2023

Then the coffee table...
I went a bit fancier with this one and opted for an Ash and Walnut contrast combo and some needlessly fancy joints, but it was a fun project.
I decided on castle joints for attaching the aprons to the legs because I liked the idea of the contrast of the woods on the corners and it just looks cool imo.
Leg sections are 45x45 again and the aprons are 20x110. The aprons fit together with a sort of half lap to form the + shape, which is then slotted into the 'castle' on the leg.

Terrible photo quality but you get the idea

HilditchGuitars · July 2023

I went for Walnut again for the top frame, 30mmx50mm, mitred corners to avoid showing any end grain. Checked against this 7 string for the best window size. I didn't want the whole thing to be too big, but wanted to make sure you could get a good view of whatever guitar goes in it, and have the tops of the legs covered too.

HilditchGuitars · July 2023

The bottom of the aprons were rebated to take a 6mm ply base, and the top was rebated to take 5mm acrylic like the cabinet. It's plenty strong enough and arguably safer than glass. But it was cheap and accessible for me at the time so I went with it. I also siliconed it in to the top again, just in case of any 'mishaps', and I added the little corner inlay strips purely for decoration.
Then I sprayed the whole lot in satin nitro.

I decided to hinge the top, but next time I'll go for a drawer underneath so you don't have to move the wife's candles etc to get at the guitar. I had to use these cranked hinges to get over the protruding material at the back of the legs. Sorry about the abysmal photo quality again

HilditchGuitars · July 2023

I made a matt for inside from seat foam and wrapped in velour for the nice soft touch, and added some dust excluding strip around the underside of the lid and some little brass hooks to keep the lid down in case anyone decides to lift it by that.