How to Make a Wooden Cable Spool from Scratch

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A good friend of mine really wanted a wooden cable spool to turn into a side table, but those things are as scarce as hen’s teeth. I looked everywhere but sadly finding a discarded spool that didn’t cost as much as a small car wasn’t on the cards. I guess everyone wants one after seeing all the amazing things you can do with them. She’s a really special person, so I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I could help her out. And then I remembered that we had some PVC pipe leftover after making our gabion planters. They would be the perfect starting point for making this wooden spool side table.

 

It’s not the first time we’ve repurposed PVC pipes to make a table. They were used to make this giant pencil-legged craft table too.

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How to Make a Cable Spool From Scratch

An 11mm (4 3/8″) PVC pipe is just the right size to form the bit where they normally wind the cable onto the spool. Can you see it? That’s the joining middle bit of the spool right there :D

 

It doesn’t look pretty yet, but it will soon. I promise. Okay so I’ve got the middle bit sorted, now all I needed to do was figure out how to make, and attach, the top and bottom circle bits. After pondering a whole bunch of potions I finally settled cutting two small circles from thick bits of wood using a jigsaw.

 

The small circles fit snugly inside the PVC pipe. Like plugs that I can screw in later. 

 

Right, I think that could work. Next thing was to come up with some kind of plan to make that PVC pipe look a little less PVC-ish and more like wood. We had some shiplap (tongue and groove) leftover from when we made my daughter’s window seat. And as luck would have it, they were the right width to go all the way around the PVC pipe. I just had to cut the shiplap to the right height.

 

Now to find out how big the top and bottom of the table should be. I’m not very scientific when it comes to something like this. I just eyeballed the PVC pipe and drew a rough circle on our patio to get a feel for how wide the top and bottom of the wooden cable spool should be. And they say that only crazy people can draw a perfect circle ;-)

I have traveled through madness to find me ;-) Click to Tweet

I ran around the house until I found a tray that was about the right size and used it to trace two circles onto some hardboard. The tray was a little smaller than I wanted so, once again, I used the “eyeball” method to make it a bit wider and cut two circles out of the hardboard using our jigsaw.

 

We glued and screwed the hardboard circles onto some pallet boards that never made it past an idea stage. Does that happen to you too? You get this thing in your head and then it just fizzles into nothing. Oh well, whatever I had planned for these pallets clearly didn’t happen.

 

Once the glue dries, the pallet boards were cut, using the hardboard circles as a template.

 

After applying a coat or two of paint, the top, bottom, and middle pieces of the wooden spool were done. Time to put this baby together and see if it works.

Putting the Wooden Cable Spool Table Together

Find the center of all the circles using this handy tip that I learned from Handan over at the Navage Patch. Glue and screw the smaller circles that fit inside the PVC pipe to the center of the bigger circles. Make sure that you glue one of the small circles to the hardboard side and the other one to the pallet side of the bigger pallet circles. You want to see the lovely grooves between the pallets when you’re done, not the boring, flat hardboard ;-)

 

Add some glue all around that little circle and squish the PVC pipe on. Attach the shiplap, or tongue and groove, by screwing and gluing it all the way around the PVC pipe.

 

Stand back and admire your work in progress. Then squish the other big pallet circle into the other end of the PVC pipe and do the same. Open a beer and do a happy dance coz it looks like a wooden cable spool. Add a beautiful graphic from The Graphics Fairy to take it to the next level or have a few more beers and call it a day ;-)

 

Don’t you just love all the beautiful labels and pictures you can download for free from her site? Hubby said I needed to make a hole in the top because it looks more authentic. I think he’s right and wouldn’t you know it. The “O” in the graphic was right in the center of where that hole went.

I’m glad I waited before having another beer, the graphic just makes it looks so much more professional.

 

I’d love to know what you think of our DIY wooden spool table.

 

Did I get it right? Does it look cable spoolish :D

 

If you want to make your own wood spool table, don’t forget to pin it for later.

 

Sharing is caring ;-)

 

BTW, if you’d like to make something similar I’ve added some affiliate links below.  Disclosure: If you click on them, we may receive a commission from Amazon. But don’t worry it won’t come out of your pocket, and it helps us come up with more crafty ideas to share with you ;-)

Gorgeous stencils that would look lovely on a cable spool table.

And if you prefer to buy rather than DIY.

Wishing you all a beautiful, creative and crafty week. Thank you for popping in for a visit.