How can I steady a slightly wobbly tabletop balanced on a garden urn?

January 3, 2019 12:00 PM

How can I steady a slightly wobbly tabletop that's balanced on a garden urn?

I have a resin garden urn, similar to this one, that's the right height for a dining table. I bought a 36" round wood table top (which is nice and straight) and it balances on the urn pretty well, but not perfectly -- especially when I'm writing on the surface or otherwise being a little jostle-y.

What kind of thing should I use to secure the top to the urn more steadily, ideally levelly? Some kind of putty or Sugru or something? A layer (or two) of foam with adhesive on both sides? Shims? Something I'm not thinking of? Should I try to file down the resin where it's not perfectly level?

Thank you for any ideas, o handy Mefites!

posted by argonauta to Home & Garden (7 answers total)

You want something like this. Stick them to the bottom of the table top where it rests on the rim of the urn, but here's the tricky bit: Only use three of them.
posted by Rock Steady at 12:15 PM on January 3, 2019

Two sided sticky velcro pads work for light duty. The velcro goes on the urn edge, stuck on by its glue side, the other side of the velcro gets attached to the bottom side of the table top. Then they meet up and stabilize the connection. Try to not put the velcro on a bumpy part that makes the wobble. It is soft enough the compression might help with leveling. I used this to stabilize large slider doors to restaurant table bases for art work tables. I used a wall mount for the back edge but the rest of the stilling of the table went OK with the velcro.

You could also find a small bucket, or round tupperware that just fits inside the garden urn's top, tightly or with velcro help. Center the plastic cylinder, once you have measured for size and found it, to the bottom of the table, then screw the plastic container to the bottom of the wood round with screws and washers to make more stable use of a screw head against soft plastic. That would do the stabilizing well.
posted by Oyéah at 12:42 PM on January 3, 2019

How about wood screws up through the urn rim, screwed into the tabletop?
posted by H21 at 12:55 PM on January 3, 2019

Is the issue that the surface wobbles, or that when you push down on one side, the other side lifts up? If the latter, the only way to fix it is to secure the tabletop to the urn. Does it need to be non-destructive / removable? Or could you just drill some holes through the rim of the urn, then screw it to the bottom of the table surface? Or use some offset clips (z-shaped bracket) of the right height to clamp under the rim of the urn?

I do think you'll find that with an urn like you linked as a pedestal for the table, you're never going to get a super-stable table, since the center of gravity is so high, and the base is so small.
posted by yuwtze at 12:57 PM on January 3, 2019

You could try sandbags, full enough that the table top has a layer of sand between it and the entire rim of the urn.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:37 PM on January 3, 2019

Are you going to be wanting to get into the urn regularly? If not, use Museum Wax. It's the sticky wax that museums use to hold artifacts in place. Living in Alaska (7.0 anybody?!) I wouldn't own a vase without this stuff!
posted by summerstorm at 6:50 PM on January 3, 2019

Put the table top down ,place the urn on center use foam in a can 4x density to caulk the top in place.
posted by hortense at 11:05 PM on January 3, 2019