Mitja Narobe's Wooden Bathtub

Posted by hipstomp / Rain Noe | 5 Mar 2013 | Comments (6)

With power tools and ready access to wood, there's plenty of things you can build for home use. Plain desks, tables and cabinets are the most straightforward, with beds, chairs and seating pushing into more challenging territory. But there are a host of domestic objects I'd never dream of trying to build—like a bathtub. And that's why I'm no Mitja Narobe.

Narobe is a woodworker who hails from Slovenia, and maniac that he is, he decided to build a bathtub out of beech with mahogany inserts.

The joinery is done via waterproof wood glue and half-inch dowels, meaning "The whole bathtub has not a single screw or nail," as he told Woodgears.

Building something this massive out of wood raises the question of how you'd straighten the edges. Narobe rigged up a router sled and removed material one pass at a time. (Presumably not at the angle shown in the photos, he's clearly got it propped up for break time.)

One of the things I like about looking at photos from overseas woodworkers is checking out what brands of tools they've got. I'd never heard of the Iskra Ero brand stamped on his router, though Slovenia's proximity to Germany makes the Bosch drill unsurprising.

And man—when was the last time you saw a corded drill with a keyed chuck? While I don't miss using them, it's nice to see useful, durable objects that have lasted this long.

While an angle grinder took care of the rough sanding, Narobe finished up with "a lot—really a lot—of hand sanding."

The tub was then sealed with twelve layers of marine-grade varnish.

While I don't doubt that some of you readers could tackle a similar project, you might want to think twice: The 440-pound tub took Narobe 200 hours, spread over five months. It would be even more impressive if from the start of the project, he delayed washing the sawdust off of him until he could do it in the finished tub.