Post #190467 by pablus on Mon, Oct 3, 2005 2:04 PM

Benzo - dreen,

It's called the Napali Bar.
Because of the bark on the sides looking just like the Napali Coast.

I went up to that little speed trap town on 301 east of Gainesville and nabbed some cypress slabs. It's the only place I could find them.

I had them setting outside for a couple months while I experimented how to fit them in linear and finally went WITH the wood and a more fluid approach. Even turning one sideways on the end.

I laid it out - marked a piece of 3/4" PT plywood around the edges and jigsawed it out. Then used floor glue and wood screws to mount the slabs to the plywood.

Rusty Key, Tall Mark and Snake helped me sand the edges of the plywood and also the surface of the cypress. We hit it with a couple of coats of Spar Urethane and that did the trick. I wanted to originally put resin over the whole thing but now I love the little pockets the wood has formed. It seems to give it much more texture. We left it for a year or so before sanding and hitting it again with the Urethane.

I propped it up with 4x4s and was going to cover them with bamboo but Chiki errrr.... Diablo said "no coverings." SO we left it open with some good advice from the boards. The original post where I asked for help is here:

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=5711&forum=7&hilite=Lagoon

The bar should be well finished by Tiki Time of 2006 because I'll have Tiki Tony's tiki in there. Plus a couple others I'll pick up at Hukilau. Some more carvings and stuff from Hawaii and the Philippines and Indonesia, where I'm going in November. It looks even better now than ever but just a bit more... a little more... and then a little more... auwe - it'll never be done.