Nick Martin of Barnes MetalCrafters details how he and his job shop designed and fabricated a wet bar countertop made of a material they rarely use: brass. Images: Barnes MetalCrafters

What fun would a job shop be if you didn’t do odd and weird jobs every now and then? My dad, Tim, always said you need to throw some curveballs at the crew to keep up their skills.

We had one of those projects come along a few months ago: a request to do a countertop for a brass wet bar. How hard could it be?

We’ve done stainless countertops in a similar fashion multiple times, so we said we could do it. And given how well we knew the customer and his workload, we figured we would have some time to wrap our heads around it. Yup, we said we would do a nice brass countertop. The shiny expensive material that we’ve never used before – unless you consider modifying brass kickplates.

There was a time when we would never have even considered a project like this because of our equipment’s limitations. Our old, trusty CO2 laser would not have been able to handle it because of brass’s reflectivity. Now we have a fiber laser that actually features brass cutting conditions, which gave us a bit of a confidence boost since fabricating this by hand was not an option. The number of holes this was going to require was mind boggling.

Our customer, Zack Wiggins, has a reputation for bringing us unique jobs, to say the least. Shooting houses, custom vent covers, oversized sliding barn doors, custom bunk bed hardware, antique grinding stone stand, and more than 50 custom granite sign frames for Research Triangle Park, a research and development park located between Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, N.C.). That’s only a partial list.

We’ve been doing work for him for years, and it has been fun to see what kind of messes he gets himself into. I say “messes,” but people go to him to get these odd jobs done because he is the man for the job. His clientele is very unique, and who are most often very successful people that talk to other successful people.

He came up to the shop and threw the brass countertop idea out there. He was building a large house that required a lot of extra details. We knew the basic overall dimensions of the countertop, so we ordered the material before we were given the wood material to wrap. The brass came in and was marked with stickers that would make anyone refrain from touching it. We decided to put the material on top of the shop offices to prevent it from getting damaged before we used it.

Next thing I knew, Zack was had carried a small, decorative piece of furniture in the office and asked if we could wrap an entire cabinet or wet bar in brass. He wanted the product to look very similar to the sample. It looked very much like it had been assembled with aircraft rivets and definitely gave us the impression that quite a bit of time would be needed to emulate the piece (Image 1). On a larger scale, I was envisioning hundreds and hundreds of rivets to get the look.

When the large wet bar was put together by the carpenter, it made its way to our shop. As soon as I saw it, I had a million things running through my head about how we were going to get this job done. Wrapping an entire cabinet in brass was going to be interesting.

We put the cabinet right outside of the office where engineer Zach Hall and I work (sorry for the confusion with Zack and Zach, but it is what it is). My dad, Zach, and I stood around the wet bar and started to form a plan of attack. From a 3D modeling standpoint, we had to wrap a solid model and figure out how to break all the pieces apart so it could be folded and assembled. Also, we had to keep in mind that there were going to be rivets or nails holding this in place instead of welds, so we had to make this look good.

Image 1: Sample Brass accent piece we were to emulate.

Our first problem was that we didn’t have a model. So we measured to get a working model made. Zach accepted the responsibility in stride and took the job head on. We were good with that and had no doubt that he could do it. This was not a rush job—the house this was going into was far from being finished. Over the next couple weeks Zach worked on this project whenever he found time. The wet bar had begun to look like it was part of our shop.

After Zach finished all the model’s sheet metal components, we had to decide if a rivet or nail would look the best. We ended up using a small brass nail with a round head. This decision took forever and we had begun to wonder when we would get it finished.

Eventually it was time to cut the brass on the fiber laser. Since we had never cut brass before, I told Zach to make sure we put some sample parts in the corner. At first I thought we would just do some small squares with holes. But that’s extremely boring. Afterall, we have brass here. Why not makes some cool trinkets? So, I told him to put some Celtic crosses, Mountains2Metal beard combs, and keychains in the first corner (Image 2).

I was glad we did this because I was able to dial in the cutting conditions to get a good cut. Honestly, I didn’t have to change much. The brass cut a lot like thin-gauge aluminum, and the burr on the bottom edge flaked off the same as well. After we pulled a couple samples out of the laser, our audience of coworkers were in awe at how good the brass looked. I was too.

The top of the wet bar was cut out of 16-ga. brass (Image 3). I only had one hiccup on one of the edges during the cutting process. I was able to cut back over top of it to complete the pass. I clinched up a little when I realized it didn’t cut completely. Luckily, everything worked out.

For all the other parts that covered up the front of the wet bar, we used a 22-ga. material. There were a lot of parts (Image 4). Some overlapped others and we tried to combine nail holes to make the assembly look as clean as possible. The front of the drawers had to be completely wrapped as well. Since this required four sides, we had to tin over the bottom edge. To make this easier, we used the laser to add relief cuts in the bend lines. You wouldn’t ever see them unless you removed the front of the drawer.

Nick Trueheart, our press brake operator, folded up all the pieces and everything basically fell in place. The only problem was the exposed front corners on the countertop. There needed to be a weld where the two flanges came together. This would make it look a lot cleaner. It’s easier said than done, but my dad convinced one of our welders, Jaime Gervacio, that he could weld the corner. He sheared some coupons of brass to practice TIG welding. He was fusing the pieces together.

The problem was that there was a gap on the corner that was going to need some filler rod. Jaime sheared some thin strips of brass to use as filler. After a little practice, he was welding the brass like it was stainless steel. It looked great. Moving on to the actual top, the corners were done perfectly. He really knocked them out of the park.

Now that every part was fitted to the wet bar correctly, Zack needed to come back and cut a hole in the top for the brass sink and the brass faucet (Image 7). Zach Hall had everything measured out correctly so Zack could to trace the cutouts. The plan was to cut the sink hole and then router out a groove so the sink would sit on the counter and the brass countertop would sit on top of that. I think it would have looked good sitting on top as well, but the final finish was perfect.

Zack recruited his dad, Hart Wiggins, to help with doing the nails (Images 5 and 6). That was one thing that was going to require some patience. Roughly 836 nails worth of patience. You couldn’t put all that effort into completing this beautiful piece and then accidently smash it with a hammer. Better them than us, right? They began drilling out every hole and then began the tedious task of hammering all the tiny nails in place. Hart did most of the drilling while Zack did the hammering. The nails were so small, he was using needle nose pliers to make it easier. We also had a makeshift workbench set up for them so they could work comfortably.

Image 2: Irish/Celtic crosses that we cut to dial in cut conditions.

It wasn’t long before they were completely done with everything. They left the shop and then Zack came back with an enclosed trailer to make the delivery. The next day he sent us some pictures and asked us to make a backsplash. I think there was just enough brass leftover to make it happen. Brass isn’t one of those materials you buy in bulk. No need to have that kind of special metal hanging out around the shop.

Needless to say, this wet bar looked amazing in the house. Granted, I haven’t seen it with the ice maker installed, but I’m sure that will only make it look better. Zack was pretty excited, and he thinks that this might be one of the coolest jobs he’s done, especially with us. Zach Hall killed it. Zack Wiggins didn’t have enough nice things to say about how well Zach Hall did with the design.

Overall, in a shop like ours, some jobs need to sit there and mature for a while. Brass changes with age and so do we. We added this to our “jobs to remember” list since we were proud of how well it turned out.

The FABRICATOR is North America's leading magazine for the metal forming and fabricating industry. The magazine delivers the news, technical articles, and case histories that enable fabricators to do their jobs more efficiently. The FABRICATOR has served the industry since 1970.

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