For my upcycle project I chose to pursue building a tensegrity table. I acquired all my materials from the makerspace located in the idea forge on CU’s campus. My materials can be seen below, consisting of two rectangular ply-wood boards, one 1.25″ diameter wood rod, about 5 feet of paracord, and about six inches of steel wire. I acquired all these materials out of a scrap wood pile and by asking nicely, as the wire and string are very cheap and often bought in abundance by people like Josh in the Maker-space.

Once I gathered these materials I cut the wood rod into the two identical pieces shown above, and then created the custom jig on the right to drill holes at 35 degrees which matches the rods. I used this jig to drill holes in the rods as well as angled holes in the top and bottom boards. Once these holes were drilled, I was ready to assemble and align my table to see if it would theoretically work.

The above photo allowed me to gauge how long the rods should be, and I ended up shaving two inches off and making them have parallel sides as you can see in the following photo. Now, I plan to sand and polish the wood, and acquire a system to tension the strings more to increase the stability of the table.