How to make an Ice/Snow Beirut Table

Step 6 Finishing Touches

Now that you've got the table pretty much assembled, you can trim it up all nice and neat.

Since ice doesn't always form perfectly, the top of your table is likely to have some minor defects. Running over them with a car ice scraper is the best way to get rid of these, plus if you have a brush on the other end of the scraper you can easily wipe off the excess shavings. Remember that you want a nice, clean surface, so don't overwork the scraping or else you'll start creating imperfections like the ones you're fixing to remove! Once you have the scraping mostly complete, I would wipe it down with a dish towel to get it really shiny, as the dish towel tends to do a slightly better job at removing the smaller shavings than the brush.

You can also use the brush to work-over the sides of the snow base, trimming it to fit the ice slab; since I had to build the base in piecemeal, my edges didn't totally line up, so I had to do more of this than (hopefully) you will. Again, moderate brushing motions will suffice here: over pressuring might take out a whole section of your table! The snow sides (remember from earlier) are ice-coated, so they won't shed as easily...just be patient and, like a master sculpture, in the end you'll have a much better product.

The only thing left now are the hole molds. For this, I made the fortunate mistake of buying grooved Solo cups (mistake only in that they were grooved; it's never a mistake to go with Solo!), but that ended up working better in the long run because the grooves make for a unique mold shape that holds the cup in place. Making the molds is surprisingly simple (be sure to have a towel on hand before you start this): simply arrange the cups as you want the molds to be, and fill them about 1/8 to 1/4 of boiling water. Let them site anywhere between 30 seconds to 2 minutes (depending on the ambient temperature), then remove the cups. Wipe out the outside water melt (in the groove) with your towel immediately. That's it! You can test it by putting an empty Solo back in the groove; you should have to twist it to have it lock into place. If it's not as deep as you'd like, simply put the Solo with boiling water back in for a bit longer. My grooves where only about 1/16 to 1/8 inches deep (enough to hold the cup plus the beer in place against any slight wind or other movement, since without them they'd slide on the ice & off the table).

One last consideration: if you're used to playing with a warm water cup, the warmest you can have it will have to be luke-warm. Despite what your fingers might want (boiling hot!), anything hotter than luke-warm might screwup your water cup mold.

Comments

[aerokid542464]

for those minnor imprefections and major cracks you could use a blow torch to melt them away, but a word of caution you need to to fast over the ice to not cause more imprefections it should create a little a big problem if you dont. and it will melt the ice together over the crack, and it will create a very clear and shiny smooth surface.

[doc8295]

how is he going to get a blow torch?????

[spizzak]

I know! The store :)