It is now time to turn my attention to building the first part of my copper tub: the wood support. In the last post in this series I had finished up rewiring some old antique elk antler lights.
Although I have made some small things out of copper including a counter top and sink for the wet bar in the great room I had never attempted to build something as substantial as a copper bathtub. I have no doubt that this would be a challenge for me and know that one of two things could happen. Either it would be a success or a dismal failure.
All of this begs the question – why in the world would you build a copper tub? Well I wanted something unique for the new bathroom. Many people suggested a claw foot tub. The problem with a claw foot tub as I saw it was that I would need a shower curtain that went all the way around. Sorry but I have no desire to stand inside a sleeve while taking a shower. Then there was the suggestion of making the entire room one large shower – nice thought but there were way too many obstacles to overcome with a full mud job in the entire room.
Why not just buy a copper tub? – Why all this resistance? Besides, the copper tubs that I have seen out there are either too ‘old world’ like the one pictured above, or too modern. I want something rustic but more to the point I want something that I made.
Some people even suggested getting one of those fiberglass shower inserts. Come on now lets get a little creative. I had looked at the possibility of using a teak tub but these were quite expensive and although interesting it didn’t provide the look that I wanted to achieve. I felt that the commercially available tubs like the one pictured here didn’t have that certain hand crafted aesthetic I was after. It looked to machined. I was determined to build my own copper tub.
The tub would be made so that the ends and and one side would butt up against the walls. The rear end of the tub would be on an outer wall as would one side (lengthwise). The wet wall would actually butt up against the internal log between the existing bathroom and the shower area. This in itself posed a challenge: using a log wall as the wet wall.
In order to accomplish this I would first need to build the tub box.
The box for the tub would measure (this is a big tub) 6′ x 33″. I laid out my 3/4″ plywood and measuring three times and cutting one I built a box with tapered sides much like an old dry sink.
There was one catch. The floor of the new bathroom is slightly sloped as it was originally a veranda. Instead of leveling the floor I decided to complicate things slightly and created the tub box with a bit of a graduated bottom edge 
that would not only level the tub when placed but actually counter slope it so that water ran the opposite direction (toward the wet wall) so that it would drain properly. Yes it would have been much easier to build up the floor but the process made sense to me at the time. Besides, with my trusty slide rule at hand I was sure that I was calculating everything correctly.
The way I was thinking of it is once I have the box built I would wrap the inside with a rubber material. Once the rubber material is in place I would check my measurements and build the actual copper tub separately. The tub would use double lap seams hammered to a tight fit and then soldered. Once the tub was proven to hold water without leaking I could drop the copper tub into the box that had already been fitted into place.
Since I would be tiling down to the tub on two sides I would have to make sure that I calculated, bent and hammered enough copper in one piece so as to create flashing behind the tile.
The 6′ long by nearly 3′ wide tub could be built using only three of my 3′ x 10′ sheets of heavy gauge copper. The most difficult part would be making sure that my measurements were exact as the copper portion would be built entirely separate from the wood super structure. The trickiest part however, aside from the water tight soldering, would be to transfer the heavy copper tub in one piece – lifting it up by myself without twisting it and gently placing it down into the tub structure already secured in place. There was no way for me to move both the superstructure and the copper tub at the same time. The copper portion alone would weigh in at around seventy five pounds. There was no room for two people in the small bath to wrestle the tub into place and certainly no room for error.
Now that the superstructure was ‘mostly built’ it could be a fixed in its final position and finished in place. In its final position I would secure the floor of the tub, fasten the tub to both the wall and the floor insulating under and around. After bringing the plumbing up from below I would build the deck for the wet wall and the copper faucets. I had only begun to design the faucets in my head and had not yet committed them to paper. I didn’t care for anything that was on the market.
Once the structure was complete I could then make my measurements and begin the actual copper-work. Call it procrastination if you like but while I mulled over in my mind exactly how I was going to tackle hammering out the copper I had to finish preparing the floor so that I could install the tub superstructure. In the next installment I prepare the floor.
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