In early March of this year I made plans to head out to a local cigar shop and have a cigar with a friend. After arriving at the shop and getting about half way into a cigar, we began to talk about the new line of Nub Cigars by Sam Leccia.

This friend of mine, Dave, is a close friend of Sam’s and coincidentally, happened to get a phone call from Sam as we were talking about him. I walked out of the room and looked around the shop while they talked. After a few minutes Dave returned and told me that Sam was looking for someone to make him a rolling table for the upcoming launch events and asked if I knew anyone who could quickly do the job.

After giving it some thought I told him that the only person I knew of was probably busy with the Philadelphia Furniture show around this time of year.

I told Dave that I might be able to help Sam out depending on what he was looking for. We walked into the Humidor to take a look at what the house roller was working from to get an idea of what the final product was to look like.

We threw around some ideas and I told Dave that I would get in touch with Sam with some design ideas and go from there.

We decided that the key features would include

• Breaking down to be easily transported
• Be small and light enough to ship if needed
• Be rugged enough to get banged around at events

After a weekend of playing with designs I emailed Sam a set of prints and quickly got to work.

At this point the time frame was a bit tight as the first event was just over three weeks away. To save time I asked my father to give me a hand to speed things along. We decided to go with a laminated build up top (like many kitchen counter tops) and use detachable chrome plated legs to reduce the turn around time as much as possible.

The top was wrapped in Maple to create an apron which was used to hide the flanges for the legs and plywood edges. The support system was also made of maple and doweled into place so that it was easily disassembled. A fixed Maple tobacco scrap bin was added last to wrap up the basic design.

Once everything was assembled, a coat of oil based stain was applied and sealed with three coats of finish.

Once completed the Table was handed over to Dave, who volunteered to get it out to Sam. A few days later I gave Sam a call to see how the table was working out and was amazed by his reaction. He absolutely loved the table and thanked me for building him more than what he expected.

While having this discussion with Sam I began to get a little embarrassed. While the table may have been beautiful in his eyes I felt that it was done too quickly and did not portray the kind of work that I was accustomed to producing.

I felt that for a production piece it was just fine, but he made it sound like it was a piece of furniture. This conversation ultimately led to my father and I feeling like we needed to show Sam what a real piece of furniture was.

Birth of a Rolling Table: Part 2
Birth of a Rolling Table: Part 3