Gaming Table Trials - Terrible Order of Activation

As I said last time, I forgot to add a side block for my hinges to hang on to. I had some wood left over from my son's train table, so I cut that down and attached it to the side.



Problem: I decided to see how well the hinges attached before staining the wood. Unfortunately I still had my drill set to screw in my fat wood screws, not these daintier ones included with the hinges. When I went to unscrew them I realized that I had started stripping the heads on several screws, and I wasn't about to risk making them useless by unscrewing them again.

I went forward with staining and got a bit of it on my nice shiny hinges. It should come off with acetone later, but it's still a problem that could have been avoided with some forethought.

Next came the latches to hold it closed.



All aces there.

Then I realized another issue with having the hinges attached - I still hadn't cut my foam to shape. I had planned on cutting it to about 30" and using a foam cutter to cleanly remove the excess while it sat in its half of the table. With it assembled I just had to grab a 2x4 piece of wood and use that for my measurement.

Problem: my edges were warped. Not to the degree that I'd notice if I'd just glued some grass right to the wood, which as you'll see is an idea I'm tempted to try next time. It was off by 1/8" at most, and only on one corner. Silly me decided "Oh hey, I can free hand that!" and starter taking off a sliver of the edge with my foam cutter. My fun physics experience of the day showed me what happened when a gust of wind sees a pink rectangle that it wants to play with.

I was fortunate to only gouge a little bit in to the foam, but left the edge a bit uneven. I decided to lay my 2x4 board on the foam and use it as a guide and finally got the foam to fit the table. I'll probably need to use a bit of filler later on, but overall it fit pretty well.

With the hinges on and the foam dry-fitted, I was pleased that the table wasn't completely awful. It has a bit of wobble to it, but nothing that should send models toppling over.  Of course there's a bit of a gap in the foam, but since we aren't playing with Micro Machines I don't anticipate it being much of a problem.

Now for the final step in assembly - gluing. Following the infallible advice of the internet I got out a tube of Loctite and a caulking gun and went to work. I dedicated an entire tube to each side, so my fingers are cross that it will be enough!

And that's where we leave off for today. I raided our bookshelf and grabbed a bunch of fat books to weigh it down, and I'll likely let it sit overnight just to make sure the foam does shift on me.

All that's left to do is paint it brown, cover it with diluted wood glue, and throw some flock on it. Don't expect that final bit for awhile - I'm trying to be thrifty and make my own flock from sawdust, but the only people I know with access to it won't be able to get it for a few days.

I'm also trying to decide on some sort of handle. I thought I could just grab the longer support board and carry it on my hip, but I feel like that puts too much weight on the hinges. If I do some sort of cloth/rubber handle (because I'm not carrying this awkward thing with a metal handle) then all the weight should be better distributed along the two side boards.

A potential problem that I'm just going to ignore is that while it's folded up, the hinge side of the foam (i.e. the middle of the table when it's unfolded) is basically sitting wide open. I can't sit the table lengthwise unless I add some blocks to the opposite end of the hinges, so that basically means the center of the table is at risk for chipping, wearing, and generally making a mess any time my flock sheds. Lucky for me, I'm ignoring it which means the problem will just go away!


See you tomorrow!

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