Welding an Aluminum Pool Table with Solar Lighting

I needed a table for our new poolside lounge chairs, but not just any table would work. These chairs sat really low to the ground, so whatever I built had to match that height. It also needed to survive the weather and look good doing it. That last part was where I usually got stuck. I can make things work all day long, but making them look interesting has always been my weak spot. I knew I wanted something beyond a basic square or rectangle, something with an actual shape to it.

After messing around with different ideas, I landed on a hexagon for the top. But here’s where it got interesting. Each side of that hexagon would have a triangle that pointed down, and those would meet up with another hexagon on the bottom that was rotated 30 degrees. The shape was cool, but it still needed something more. It needed a pattern to really make it pop. This is where I had to swallow my pride a bit. I went hunting for patterns online instead of trying to create one from scratch.

I found exactly what I needed on Etsy for six bucks. Not handmade items, but digital design files. They had a collection of 65 decorative patterns, and one of them was perfect for this project. The files came in different formats including SVG, which I could open in Illustrator to make some tweaks before bringing it into Autodesk Fusion. If you’re interested in learning Fusion for your own projects, check out our Fusion for Makers course. It’s perfect for taking your ideas from concept to reality.

The cutting part of this build used the xTool Metal Fab, which is basically three tools in one. It’s a laser welder, laser cleaner, and laser cutter that can work either handheld or as a CNC. I’d used it before to cut thin brass, but this time I went with eighth-inch aluminum. Aluminum made sense for a few reasons. First, I had sheets of it sitting in the shop. Second, it doesn’t rust, which is perfect for outdoor furniture. Third, I’d always been terrible at welding aluminum with TIG or MIG, and this machine had an aluminum setting that supposedly made it easy.

The cuts this machine made blew my mind. Every single cut in that eighth-inch aluminum came out perfectly clean with no slag on the back. After some test cuts that turned out so good I could actually use them, I cut out all my pieces. The welding part was where things got really wild. I pulled out the welding gun, did some test welds on scraps, and couldn’t believe what happened. The machine literally moved the gun backwards in a straight line while feeding the wire. All those years of struggling with aluminum welding, and here I was making perfect seams just by pulling the trigger.

Assembling everything wasn’t quite as simple. The triangular pieces that went between each downward tooth needed some bending to fit properly. I laid the top flat on the table, positioned the bottom piece over it, and bent the pieces out to match the edges. All my welding had to happen on the inside of the table since the pieces met at weird angles with thin edges. After getting everything tacked together strong enough that it wouldn’t fall apart, I took it home for the finish work. There was a lot of grinding, smoothing, and filing to do in my garage where it wasn’t a thousand degrees.

The raw aluminum looked cool, but it didn’t match anything else in our backyard. Plus, those small gaps along the seams where the right-angle cuts met at not-right angles needed filling. I used this stuff called Thixo, a thick epoxy that squirts into gaps and can be sanded and painted after it cures. After filling all the seams and letting it dry, I went bold with the paint color. But the real magic happened when I added the solar lantern I’d found on Amazon for twelve bucks. That hole in the top of the table was sized perfectly for it. The lantern charges during the day and lights up the pattern at night.

This project taught me something important about making things. My tendency has always been to focus on function over form because I don’t see myself as a designer. But there’s no shame in working with artists or using designs from people who are better at that stuff than you are. Find people who fill your skill gaps. It makes your projects better, and in this case, it turned a simple table into something that actually looks awesome sitting by our pool. The combination of that geometric shape, the pattern, and the solar light feature made this way cooler than anything I could have designed completely on my own. Thanks for following along with this build. Now, go make something awesome!