Coffin Keezer Bar Build

Sorry I don't have more pictures of the progress. I started it 12 days ago and have been on a B line to finish it in time for my Christmas Party.

I decided to build the bar this way because I have the space in my basement for it and wanted it to look like more of a bar than a traditional keezer with the tilting hinges. I haven't really seen anything quite like it in the forums but have taken a lot of ideas from what I have seen to come up with it.

The main feature of the bar is the scissoring top where you can lift it up and the top of the bar stays level. I took this idea from an "instructables" post. Here is a link to that post.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Coffee-table-upgrade/?ALLSTEPS

The bar top is 5 2x8s that I used a kreg jig from underneath the secure together. So it is extremely heavy and would be almost impossible to lift with one person if I did not include the two 35lb gas struts. I was inspired to use the gas struts from Joed15's "Fathers Day Coffin Keezer" (link below). The struts allow us to keep the bar top as one piece instead of cutting it into thirds.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/fathers-day-coffin-keezer-416861/

Other than that, it as the standard functions and features of a coffin keezer.

I plan on finishing the project with stain and some poly and will post the progress on here when it's finished. I am also going to make a tour video much like Brian Willis' "Keezer Tour" video on YouTube.

Feel free to ask questions about the project, I am happy to give answers.

Cheers!

very nicely done

Here are some more pictures of the keezer since we finished the two coats of dark stain.



We used Minwax's Dark Walnut stain.



We have decided to not put any tile or finishing material as a backsplash.



Small beer fridge



Our LED Light strip we are going to run underneath the whole bar, under the backsplash, and above the small beer fridge. Purchased from Amazon. Bought two splitters and extension cords to splice them to the same frequency.

Here is an update to my original post. The bar is now complete and I am sharing with you a variety of pictures of the build.





















The light switch controls the LED lights on the bar. I figured it would be easier to have a switch in the dark than having to find the remote.



I made room for another keg to carbonate on deck while the other four kegs are in the keezer.





The bar while the bar top is closed.



The bar lifts up with the assistance of 45lb gas springs. It does not tilt so you can lift it while things are still on top of it.




I will upload more pictures of the build soon.

Looks fantastic man, loving the stain. Jealous!

I love it. And the scissor top is genius. Can't wait to see more from the build.:rockin:

Wow this is awesome! I love how it lifts out and the whole look.

I would love to read on how you calculated the hinges. maybe I'm a bit daft today or the instructable is not that clear. again love your build. :rockin:

Looks Great!!!

rockinmarty said:

I would love to read on how you calculated the hinges. maybe I'm a bit daft today or the instructable is not that clear. again love your build. :rockin:

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One of the big factors in executing the scissoring top was whether you would be able to get the kegs in and out. Ultimately you want enough space to move them around. Considering the 7.2 cuft freezer we have is incredibly snug with four kegs in it gave us a very small window to work with.

One of the keys is that the back arm absolutely has to overlap the top arm. If they are both laying flat the bar will not lift high enough our back far enough.

I used photoshop and after effects to make an animation to 100% scale to determine whether it was even possible to pull it off.

Another factor is that depending on how heavy your bar top is, you cannot have the bar go too far back. Our bar as a whole turned out to be very heavy and would have probably been fine to give an extra couple of inches to but we didn't know that when we started.

You can determine how far the bar top goes back by how close you put the back arm to the back wall. The wall acts as a stopper for the hinges and you want the hinges to go at least past the vertical point so the top stays in the upright position.

We used 1x2 oak for the arms and the hinge casings because we wanted as strong of arms as possible. We built three hinges and put two on each side of the freezer and one on the right side.

I will take more close pictures of the hinges when I can. I didn't take any while building them because I had my burners on to get it done asap.

It never hurts to create some out of even cardboard since the width of the wood doesn't matter it only strengthens the arms.

Just curious about the lid for the keezer and attaching it to the bar top.

I see some bolts and a piece of plywood between. Any insight on how you did this? Great BUILD!

I've been searching for a solution for my keezer/bar top and this is exactly the idea I needed.

The pictures all appear to be broken now. Does anyone happen to have any of the originals that they might be able to repost? My Google-fu has turned up only some very grainy cached images and I would much appreciate some detail especially on the mounting for the hinges and gas springs.

julienj said:

I've been searching for a solution for my keezer/bar top and this is exactly the idea I needed.

The pictures all appear to be broken now. Does anyone happen to have any of the originals that they might be able to repost? My Google-fu has turned up only some very grainy cached images and I would much appreciate some detail especially on the mounting for the hinges and gas springs.

Click to expand...

I'm in the same boat, from what I can gather this is the perfect solution for my grand plan so I'd love to see the full build pictures.

Your scissor lid is awesome, but it got me to thinking, at around 3am, when I woke up from a dead sleep, (it's when I do REM Problem Solving LOL)... if you use 2 different lengths arms for your scissor, say like a 9" in the back, and an 18" in the front, assuming a 36" deep door, you can create an angled opening, higher in front and lower in back with greater access. this also means you'll need less clearance behind before you hit the wall.
I'm no engineer but playing with graph paper and building on your awesome idea, I can see roughly an improvement from 15" front open access using 2 12" arms to 27" using 18" arm in front and 9" rear arms. you also go from 12" wall clearance to 9".
Like I said, I'm no engineer, and my number are from just free handing pencil on graph paper. this also assumes the arms are perfectly vertical which we know won't stay up, so there are unknown (to me) variables, but I thought I'd throw that out there.

Thanks for posting this awesome design that I'll be stealing in a few months when I get ready to pull the trigger...

CHEERS!

loco88 said:

I'm in the same boat, from what I can gather this is the perfect solution for my grand plan so I'd love to see the full build pictures.

Click to expand...

I happened upon pics from this post while searching Google. Funny thing, I was looking to see if there is any other ideas out there, 98% of Google and 98.5% of Pinterest pics are from this awesome forum! LOL