I originally thought to build this crazy thing to be hardy enough to withstand Seattle winters.

The stainless steel base would be impervious. The xylophone keys had lived outside on XyloVan for more than a decade without much worse wear than a little tarnish. The kick drum is an old paint bucket, and the hardware made of aluminum and steel.

And … well, the bass and the percussion rack turned out to be a bit more vulnerable, so maybe I’ll wind up sewing an enormous snood out of weatherproof tarps to protect it against the elements.

But I had always planned for it to be durable. I looked for a while at my wife’s lovely idea of paving it with shiny metal scales punched out of aluminum cans, and then covering it in a thick coat of deep pour resin.

But the cost, the hassle – and the design-integration challenges of making that all work with the way the instruments were installed proved to be too daunting.

So I fell back to plan A – cover it with galvanized metal.

Rather than sheeting it with a monolithic slab of metal, I used steel flashing, which comes in a 14inch-wide roll, and installed ribs of 1/8×3/4-inch aluminum strap. I predrilled holes for the fasteners into the aluminum, ran a bead of vinyl caulk along each of the seams, and then nailed the ribs down through said holes with copper boat nails, which look pretty fetching.

The next problem was how to help sound from the bass and kick drum escape into the sound being created by the other musicians.

My solution was to cut round sound ports in the table surface and fit them with stainless-steel drains.

Sooo, let the jokes ensue. I know I’m asking for it.