He bought a solid core birch door from Home Depot for $65. This is the door after he applied the trim and a few coats of stain.
Penny-sortin’ time. You basically need three levels of penny brightness; shiny, medium brown, and chocolate brown.
There are lots of different types of adhesive that will work. He used Loctite.
Shiny sides are 6×6, Medium sides are 5×5, and Dull sides are 5×6.
Instead of going block by block, you should do it this way keeping a diagonal all the way across.
Pay attention to your angles because if your pennies don’t line up, you’ll pay for it when you reach the other end.
If they start to get a little off, go back to a straight line. Angles should be 30-60-90.
There are lots of different ways to do the edges, but the easiest way is to just cut the pennies.
Getting close..
“OK so after all that work, it’s nervous time. If I mess up the glaze, I could ruin the whole thing. I chose this product, a two-stage epoxy like they use on bar tops. It comes with a resin and an activator. You mix it twice and then get to setting it. Spread it around and use a hairdryer to get the bubbles out (and there will be bubbles since this is an uneven surface). I was really nervous about this step.”
The result makes the pennies look like they are sitting under perfectly still water.
5,218 pennies later…
Beautiful.
He left just one penny tails up, to drive all his OCD friends insane.
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