If you don't make it then I'll show you, I won't buy it!

[Hyndis]

http://www.tomspinadesigns.com/Furniture.html

The Carbonite Desk is unique though, but it sounds like the guy is up for building other similarly unique pieces of furniture if you can cough up the dough.

[Dreamstalker]

4) The "lighter man made stone" is called "Solid Surface". It is just as expensive. However, it would not have worked because the stone they wanted was Quartz. The glass like look of quartz is not something that they have made well in Solid Surface.

Make it out of Plexi, acrylic or similar?

[Polenicus]

I need one of those =P do you have a link?

Well, first you'll need a smuggler who's dumped one of your shipments, then you'll need a badass bounty hunter to catch him, and finally you'll need a tabanna gas mining platform with a carbonite freezing unit...

Be careful though, this kind of furniture tends to attract Jedi.

[Cyphr]

Such a stone table, while staggeringly expensive, would look extremely awesome as a centerpiece for a large room or hall. But only if supported by impressive legs, not spindly things. A stone table needs to be stately and solid looking, not held up by toothpicks.

Besides, he could get something just as awesome for cheaper, if he really wanted to. Perhaps something like:

I need one of those =P do you have a link?

[Hyndis]

Such a stone table, while staggeringly expensive, would look extremely awesome as a centerpiece for a large room or hall. But only if supported by impressive legs, not spindly things. A stone table needs to be stately and solid looking, not held up by toothpicks.

Besides, he could get something just as awesome for cheaper, if he really wanted to. Perhaps something like:

[42_42_42]

This thread has had me laughing so hard I have tears streaming down my face and I can hardly breathe!

WTH was this decorator thinking???

Did he ever say why they wanted it to be a folding table?

That design proposal is seriously the stupidest most bizzare idea for a table I have ever heard of.

[XCashier]

Makes me wonder if they'll eventually do us a service and convince someone to make them a 4" stone canopy for their bed.

CRUNCH!!!

[jerkface11]

I don't think you could get a 4'x9'x4" slab of quartz for ANY price.

[Comechatcha]

Makes me wonder if they'll eventually do us a service and convince someone to make them a 4" stone canopy for their bed.

[Chromatix]

I hear you on stone's fragility. The important fact is: stone has IMMENSE compressive strength, but NO tension strength (and not much in shear either). Which is why you can use stone to build cathedrals and arch bridges, but you use steel for a suspension bridge.

A slab supported at it's ends is in compression at the top, but tension at the bottom. To make it hold up, it needs to be immensely thick to minimise the tensile forces, and the span needs to be as small as possible. So there do exist stone bridges in a trestle form, but they are *foot* bridges across shallow streams, where it wasn't worth building a proper arch bridge.

Concrete has the same problem. That's why most large and all upright pieces of concrete are in fact *reinforced* concrete, with steel bars down the middle - the steel provides some tensile strength.

[bob the goat]

Sorry, I forgot to check back on this post.

1) Yes, it is technically possible to create a hollow tabletop using 3/4" thick stone panels. They did not want that becuase on the edges you could see where the side panels were attached to the top panel, they really wanted a 4" thick stone.

Even IF you hollowed it out, stone is exceptionally fragile. It is WAY more fragile than glass. It would break.

2) The stone alone would be over $20K, so no, no one would want to buy it.

3) Yes, I was talking to a "middle man", that is not the actual end user. However, it was an interior designer. They are the ones responsible for coming up with this bad idea.

4) The "lighter man made stone" is called "Solid Surface". It is just as expensive. However, it would not have worked because the stone they wanted was Quartz. The glass like look of quartz is not something that they have made well in Solid Surface.

[Samaliel]

45 legs, on a 9' long table... That's about a leg every half-foot ! And why would any one want a one ton folding table ?

Augh. My brain hurts. Please, make the hurt stop...

[bigpedaler]

Wal-Fart used to sell this 'stone finish' in a spray can; resin & fiberglass over a styrofoam block the right size, then spray it with the stone-in-a-can, then sell it to dumbass for twice the quoted price...serve 'em right.

[machinest]

I work in a machine shop, we have a 4'X4'X4"graiite table (flat stable surface to measure from) it sits on a frame made from welded 4X4 steel tube and the only time it was moved we had to hire riggers as it exceded the safe working load of our forklift!I can not see any one puting folding legs under it.

[earl colby pottinger]

I didn't even get any further than the above quote without going Anybody with an ounce of common sense knows that stone is freaking heavy. Maybe -- just maybe -- you could make a lightweight plastic replica that looks like stone without the weight, but as xaenon pointed out, it would still look ridiculous on spindly folding legs. Big, thick solid legs, maybe, but not skinny folding legs.

You need to cut outs that leave a web pattern behind, at best you could cut the weight down to a third (700+ pounds) or may be even a quarter (500+ pounds). That is still not a portable table as implied by the folding legs.

Now if you use some high tech high strength metal to support this slab on one or two legs it would look really neat, but in no way could it be considered portable.