This Jacobs radial engine coffee table is the work of Dan Solheim, an aircraft technician and engineer who founded Creations From The Sol in order to turn aircraft parts into high-end furniture.
Solheim started out restoring classic American muscle cars in his teens and progressed from there to getting his A & P license, this is a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification for professionals that allows them to perform maintenance, repairs, or tests on aircraft.
“A & P” stands for “Airframe and Powerplant,” and this certification means that not only does Solheim work full time on maintaining and repairing aircraft, it means he’s also uniquely qualified to rebuilt radial engines as coffee tables.
The Jacobs radial engine coffee table is a great example of Dan’s work, the engine itself was sourced from a Stearman Model 75, later known as the Boeing-Stearman Model 75, or more simply as the Boeing Stearman.
This is almost certainly the heaviest coffee table that money can buy, the upside of that is that it won’t be knocked out of place easily.
The Jacobs R-755 is a 12.4 liter, seven-cylinder, air-cooled, radial engine originally manufactured by the Jacobs Aircraft Engine Company. Depending on specification the R-755 could produce anywhere from 200 to 350 hp, and a variant of the engine was used to power helicopters.
When building each piece, Dan make sure that the engine has all of the original parts and the correct hardware as called for in the original parts manuals. He can adjust the size of the glass top to meet each clients needs, with larger or smaller diameters being possible depending on the size of the space the table will fill.
As you may have guessed, these tables don’t come cheap, they sell via the Creations From The Sol Etsy store for $11,000 USD each with a $500 delivery fee in the USA. Each table is 100% made in the United States and the lead time on a new build each one is approximately 16 weeks.
If you’d like to read more about these unusual tables or place an order you can click here to visit the official store.
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
