Here is how I built Poker Table #2: The Way More Expensive Than I Thought Edition…
This is a multiple page post and the links to the next portion of the article are at the bottom.
I drew my inspiration for this table from Mark Junell.
I started out with three sheets of 4′x8′ plywood, one nice, and two particle.
Cutting The Wood
I used a wooden yardstick and created a jig by drilling a hole at the 24″ mark to place a pencil in for drawing the rounded outer corners to make a (near) perfect half circle on each end of all three sheets of plywood. I measured the first piece and then used it as a template for cutting the others. In some of the photos you’ll notice I marked the corresponding ends with crosses so I could keep things “straight.”
Here you’ll see the first piece resting on my Mom’s rolling footlocker full of horse equipment. This thing came in handy as it served as my sawhorse for all of the cutting.
After cutting the ends off with one of my Dad’s many jigsaws we used on this project.
Here are two pieces laid up against the garage door. The “ring” on top is the 4″ wide rail that will eventually be wrapped in 1″ foam and then vinyl. The piece behind it will serve as the base that everything will either screw into or rest upon.
The next few photos you’ll see my progress of mounting the folding table legs.
This is the “nice” piece of plywood. This side up right now is not the good side so it’s where I made all the measurements so I wouldn’t be marking on the nicer side. The measurements here are 1.5″ from the end for the bottom rail cap and 9″ in from the end to make the racetrack.
The next two photos are of the 8 T-nuts that I drilled holes for and screwed into the nice sheet of plywood. Don’t worry, this will be later covered up by 1/4″ foam and the playing surface felt. It is resting directly over top of the baseboard that has the legs on it. This is how the felt center piece will be secured to the base so as to not slide around.
This was to keep the smaller rail cap piece from snapping in two as I made my cuts going all the way around. Since it was just my Dad and I working on the table at this point we had to get creative to make sure everything was supported properly.
When I was making the cuts we realized that alot of vibration was caused and that created a need for some downward pressure so that my Dad could concentrate on holding up the board as I went around making my cuts so we used two 45lb plates from his workout bench. They worked like a charm.
Here you will see a picture of three jigsaws. We started the project using the one on the far right because my Dad told me that the one in the middle had burnt up on him but he still had it for some reason. Well, we managed to break a non-replaceable part that held the blade in place on the first one which forced us on to the middle one. It was working just fine until it managed to get really hot and started SMOKING. It was an awful smell and rendered it useless once and for all. This led us to make our second trip of the day to The Home Depot to purchase a third jigsaw. We found ourselves the most powerful one and man it was like a hot knife cutting through butter. Had we been in possession of this bad boy the entire time we would have been able to make all the cuts we needed in about an hour or so.
The next two photos are both of the bottom rail cap and the racetrack cut from the nice piece of plywood.
The next two photos you’ll see of what eventually will be the padded rail. These two pieces are the 4″ and 1.5″ pieces that I previously cut. When flipped over the smaller 1.5″ piece will act as a cap around the nicer racetrack piece.
This is a shot of the nice side of the racetrack piece awaiting stain and polyurethane.
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