Gaming Table Trials: Takeoff

Last month I might have challenged myself to finally make a portable gaming table or else. Being the miser that I am, I decided I should get moving on this or risk having to give away more free stuff.

I've been planning things out with my father-in-law because, quite frankly, shop class didn't stick. After getting a solid idea of how I wanted the table to look I set out to the local hardware store to get prices and see what options I had available. I know that the tutorial I linked in my original post just ripped a 4'x8' sheet of plywood, but table saws terrify me so I had to cross my fingers that there was enough of a demand for flat boards that I could find them on the cheap.

I know you guys miss my caveman MS Paint drawings, so here's basically how it's meant to look:

The light brown areas are meant to be cut from the plywood, but I say nuts to that. After becoming disheartened at all the expensive cuts of 1x3 lumber, I almost gave up hope. However, I found myself in a seedy area in the back of the lumber area, lit by a single flickering lightbulb. There, piled haphazardly as though no one loved them, I found furring strips.

 I have no idea what use normal people have for these, but I found the support for the bottom of the board as well as the wall to go around them. At $.84 for an 8' board, I figured I could suffer with them being unwieldy for my prototype table. They were lightweight, cut to the right shape (more or less), and were easy on the wallet. I was pleasantly surprised that the wood itself wasn't junk - I honestly expected it to be a small step above particle board in quality. I mean at $.84 there are obviously some flaws to be found, but for the most part the boards are decent. And since I'm operating under the flag of "ignore my mistakes, it's a prototype!" it's all good.

From there the rest was pretty simple. I found a pair of 2'x4' boards on sale for about $8 each, 1/2" foam for the terrain, some stain, screws, wood glue, hinges, and latches. All told I don't think I'm spending more than $30.




The only power tools I needed (so far) are a drill and a chop saw, both of which I had. After failing to measure the actual dimensions of the furring strips, I made cuts under the assumption that they were 1"x3", instead of 3/4"x2.5". Compounding that was my inability to do simple math, which somehow had me assuming that the boards were 1" wide anyway. Fortunately my many failures at gluing miniatures together has taught me the importance of dry fitting, so I took my 22" boards in the middle and hacked them down to a more reasonable 19".



And taadaa! Nothing has been assembled yet, but the walls and supports all line up and it didn't even take me 10 hours to get them that way. The table would probably be done today, but my daughter has become so obsessed with Legos that we decided to build her a little table so that I don't have to empathize with all the "Lego caltrops" jokes that parents are so fond of. That's currently sitting outside with the stain drying, so tomorrow should let me devote some time to getting the basic boards assembled, and I may even have enough time to disassemble it and fix some mistake I'm not seeing.

Will the table work? Have I made some grave miscalculation that will be met with horrific consequences? Tune in tomorrow (or the next day, if my wife convinces me to make her project first) for the continuing story of the Gaming Table Trials!


See you tomorrow!

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