This DIY record player stand is brought to us from Reddit user kmlucy, who did an awesome job documenting the build process for our enjoyment. If you’re thinking about building your own DIY record player stand then this is a great post to find inspiration and gain a sense of how much effort it is going to require.
Just because this is a tough project doesn’t mean you aren’t capable of making your own DIY record player stand. With patience, dedication, and the proper research, an DIY project can be accomplished.
Update: Since everyone is asking, If you don’t have the tools to weld your own metal legs, I found a somewhat similar pair you can buy on amazon Alternatively you could use these less expensive hairpin legs and I’m sure they would still look great.
If you are thinking about getting started in woodworking as a hobby we recommend reading this Woodworking for Beginners guide.
DIY Record Player Build:
As per tradition, here is the finished project first. Overall, I’m really happy with how this DIY record player stand turned out. The records fit well in the cubbies, the player and speakers fit on the top, and it looks good in the space. There are certainly things I would change if I did it again, but overall it turned out better than I expected.
Here is some quick info about it to start with: The legs are 3/8″ x 3″ steel flat bar painted flat black and the wood is 1 1/2″ thick Ambrosia maple finished with waterborne polyurethane. Overall, it is 30″ high x 60″ wide x 16″ deep.
I designed the entire table and made drawings to work from first. In this diagram:
1 = Table top
2 = Cubby assembly
3 = Leg
4 = Stiffener bar
DIY Record Player Stand: Metalworking Stage
I’ll start by going through the metalworking part of the DIY record player stand build. The first step was cutting the flat bar down to length for each part of the legs. I also cut a piece of 2″ x 2″ x 3/16″ angle to length at the same time for the stiffener bar, which I’ll talk about later.
Each leg is made of three parts: the top, and two bottom halves. I bent each of the four bottom halves on the press brake. I would have preferred to do the bottom as one piece, but the geometry would have caused a collision between the leg and the top cross-member of the press on the second bend.
I checked the angle using a digital angle finder as I went.
I tacked the two leg top sections together and drilled the mounting holes for both at the same time. The outer holes are oversized to allow for wood movement.
Here are all the pieces for the legs finished and ready for welding.
I beveled each edge in preparation for welding.
Setup to weld the upper face.
One side welded.
Setup to weld the bottom face.
Second side welded.
I ground the welds flush on all four faces.
Here are the finished bottom leg sections. This is the part I mentioned I would have preferred to make as one piece earlier, but this worked out fine.
I set up the legs to weld the top plates on, and realized I hadn’t quite bent the legs to the correct angle. I was able to pull them to size with a clamp, but you can see a minor amount of bowing towards the bottom of the legs. I doubt anyone but myself will ever notice, but I wish I bent the legs just a bit more in the press.
I only welded the outside here so I could avoid having to clean up a fillet weld on the inside.
Here are the top corners ground flush.
Finally, here are the finished (aside from paint) legs.
That piece of angle I mentioned earlier serves two purposes. The first is to give somewhere to bolt the table to the wall. Because of how shallow the table is relative to its height, and because of the radius of the bottom of the legs, I knew it would be susceptible to tipping. Bolting it to the wall is an easy way to solve that while keeping the look I wanted for the legs.
The second purpose is to provide a bit of extra strength to the wood top. Because of the cutouts in the top for the cubbies, there are only a few inches of material remaining and I wanted to beef that up a bit.
Here I drilled clearance holes to bolt it to the underside of the table top.
I milled slots in the other leg of the angle (the one that bolts to the wall). These allowed me to drive screws into the studs, no matter where the studs fell relative to the table.
In hindsight, it probably would have been fine to just drill a few holes and use toggle bolts if I didn’t hit a stud.
That was the end of the metalworking. Here are the finished (again, aside from paint) legs and stiffener bar.
DIY Record Player Stand: Woodworking Stage
Moving on to the woodworking. The first step was to cut the boards down to rough length for milling.
I played around with the various boards to get the grain patterns I liked, and the widths and lengths I needed.
On to milling the boards. Some were narrow enough to fit on the jointer, but a few were too wide. For those, I removed the guard and jointed as much of the width as I could, the used a piece of plywood in the planer to allow the un-jointed edge to hang off.
I was having some problems with the dust collection during this, hence the huge mess.
After getting one face flat, I ran them through the planer to get the other face flat and parallel. I also took all the boards to just over final thickness here.
Back to the jointer to get a square edge.
Then over to the tablesaw to get the second edge square. I kept the boards as wide as I could here while removing any broken or damaged corners.
I put in biscuits to make alignment during glue up easier. I had to be careful not to put any biscuits where I would later cut the boards down. I didn’t want half a biscuit showing on the edge of a piece.
Getting ready to glue up each panel.
Here is one panel glued and clamped up. I checked with a straightedge to make sure I was getting even clamping pressure and not bowing the panel in one direction or the other.
After the glue dried, I ran the panels through the planer again to clean up the faces and take them to final thickness.
I couldn’t come up with a good way to cut all the interior miters on the top panel. All my ideas involved either a large potential to screw up, taking way too much time to slowly close in on my lines with a chisel or plane, or cutting the board again and having to glue it back up.
Eventually I decided to just pay a friend to cut them on his CNC with a 90° ‘V’ bit.
I used a scrap 2×4 on the outside face to prevent tearout.
The cut took about 45 minutes and the dimensions were spot on. I did this before cutting all the pieces for the cubbies just to be safe. I could have adjusted the dimensions of the cubbies later if the opening size wasn’t perfect.
Here is the top after cutting.
The edges were really clean, with virtually no tearout or step lines. I had to adjust the depth dimension by 1/32″, but otherwise all dimensions were spot on.
I used transfer punches to transfer the holes in the metal components to the underside of the wood top.
I drilled out each of the holes the correct size for threaded inserts.
I like using these threaded inserts, because it eliminates the risk of stripping out the hole when bolting and unbolting the parts repeatedly.
I bolted on the legs and stiffener bar for a quick test fit, and everything looked good.
With the top done, I could move on to working on the cubbies. I cut all the pieces to rough length on the miter saw.
Each cubby needs the two sides, the bottom, and the back. I tried to keep the grain as continuous as possible through the cubbies, while avoiding big knots in the wood.
After that, it was a lot of cutting.
Each of the four pieces in each cubby needs a unique combination of miters and square cuts.
The lengths all need to be extremely precise as well, or the miters won’t line up cleanly.
I had to plan ahead to make sure I cut the same sides off boards where the grain needed to flow, while avoiding knots and defects and keeping the most interesting parts of the grain.
Each of the side pieces needed the corners knocked off to fit up into the table top.
After a LOT of cutting, here are all the components for each cubby laid out.
Some quick test fits, and everything lined up well.
The grain flowed as well as could be expected with the interior miters having removed large sections.
I really love how interesting the grain and patterns are in Ambrosia maple.
I test fit the cubbies as best I could to the top without them being glued up.
After that, it was a lot of sanding. I went ahead and sanded all the parts up before gluing them, since the interior corners would make sanding after glue up quite difficult.
I used biscuits for alignment and for increased strength. Plain miters aren’t the strongest joint, but between the biscuits, the 1 1/2″ thickness, and the fact that the cubbies won’t be supporting all that much weight, I’m not too worried about the joints failing.
More biscuits.
There are a lot of biscuits.
Here is one of the cubbies with all the biscuits cut laid out.
I made these clamping blocks out of some scrap 2×4. I cut one long piece, the chopped it into six pieces.
You can see how these let me clamp down through the mitered faces. They put the load of the clamps on the face of the miters to avoid damaging the relatively fragile sharp edge.
I glued up each of the cubbies as a unit before glueing the cubbies to the top. I wish I had spent more time here cleaning up the glue squeeze-out. I spent a lot of time paying for that mistake and trying to get the glue out of the interior corners later.
With the cubbies glued up, I could do more test fits of the top to the cubbies. Everything lined up pretty well. There were some small gaps, but nothing that would be noticeable once filled.
I glued up the top to the cubbies. Because of the geometry, I could only use biscuits one one edge of each cubby, but having some is better than none.
Once everything was glued up, I filled any small gaps with wood filler made from sanding dust and wood glue. I sanded those flush, as well as the joints between pieces.
I filled all the beetle holes on the exposed surfaces with clear epoxy and sanded them flush as well. Once finished, you can’t tell the difference between filled and unfilled, but it prevents any water or dust from settling in the holes.
I painted the legs and stiffener bar of the DIY record payer stand with flat black Rust-Oleum Professional Enamel sprayed through an HVLP gun.
This was my first time using HVLP, and it works better than I could have hoped. I got good, even coverage with just one coat, and the lack of overspray and fumes compared to spray paint cannot be overstated.
I used the same gun to spray Varathane Water Based Polyurethane on the wood part of the record player stand. I did two coats on the back and underside, and four on the top and front.
Finally, here are all the components of the DIY record player stand finished and ready for assembly.
I bolted the legs and stiffener bar to the threaded inserts I installed earlier.
I also screwed a power strip to the bottom of the table to plug the record player and speakers into.
I added felt pads to the bottom of the legs to prevent any scratching of my floor.
DIY Record Player Stand: Finished Photos
Here is the DIY record player stand all finished and attached to the wall. I decided not to drill holes for the power cords in case I get a different record player or speakers in the future with different cord locations. The cords just come up behind the table.
Once again, I’m super happy with how this turned out. The record player finally (FINALLY) has a permanent home. With it easily accessible and easy to look through the albums, I’m hoping it gets used a lot more often.
DIY Record Player Stand: Conclusion
Thanks for reading and I hope this DIY record player stand build log inspired you to pull the trigger on that woodworking or DIY project you’ve been thinking about. If you enjoyed this build log thank reddit user kmlacy for letting us share it with you and don;t forget to checkout our other DIY build logs.
