Well, after a lot of planning and a lot of design changes, the final table for my league began this weekend.

Other than buying a lot of supplies which emptied out one of the savings accounts (lol) and starting to cut the wood, not a whole lot got accomplished this weekend. It has been 90+ degrees this weekend so I didn't last long outside.

Without going too in-depth, I decided to have Eric from BigSlik design the gaming suede for my table, going with over a 2" raised rail, custom legs, and a shuffletech shuffler.

I'll be posting tons of pictures throughout the build, so stay tuned! Here are a few to get you started:

Final design of the rail:
(after a lot of thought and planning, I decided to go with a raised rail. This particular design called for 6 sheets of wood. Four sheets of 5/8" and two sheets of 3/4". While some might say that is a ton of wasted wood, the remaining inside sheets that I am not using are being used for a second smaller table that will be holding all of our tourney supplies like chips, cards, etc. Further updates of that table build will continue throughout the thread)



The first of six sheets:



4 inches cut off the width of the 96" X 48" sheet of wood:
(I wanted to keep this table the same size as the previous tables that I made, but with me going a greater distance from side to side wrapping the vinyl around a thicker rail, I had to shave 2 inches off of each side to ensure that I would be getting enough material to wrap the entire rail. As shown in the first picture, 4 inches will be cut off the side of sheets A, B and C and 5 inches will be cut off of sheets D, E and F)



My beautiful/high-tech circle-tracing tool:
(Using the leftover wood from cutting the sides off, I created a nifty little tool to be able to trace the half-circles for the ends of the table)




Corners cut off:



Sheet D part of the railing:


More updates and pics to come throughout the week!

why not just use taller, firmer foam to make a higher rail? you got reasons for going with all that wood in the rail?

I love railing table builds here. more pics asap

Yay best part of home poker.

Small little update before I install the vinyl tomorrow...

Sheet A at the bottom with sheet B laying across it:
Sheet B (and C) needs roughly 1 3/4" cut off the inside part of the rail to allow the wrapping and stapling of the vinyl much easier. The 1 3/4" section that is cut off will later be re-installed over the underside of the vinyl after the vinyl is installed




Sheet B (outer piece) screwed down to Sheet A:
inner piece leaning up against the ping pong table



Sheet C screwed down to sheet B:



Inner sheets B & C that will be re-installed once the vinyl is installed:


More pictures will come by Friday as I will have the entire railing assembled.

A railing with 2 inches of foam is not feasible. The foam would get extremely compressed from people leaning on it and it would cause unnecessary wear on the vinyl itself over time.

You looking for any players for when your league starts? I'm new to Minnesota and have been looking for some decent players.

DID you buy the shuffletech already? If not, make sure to purchase the extended 3 yr warranty if its still available! My shuffletech wore out after about a year of 1night/week cash games (8 hrs, 50 games, so about 400 hours of use). The $80 extended warranty is not a sucker bet in this case.

This thread be missing lots-o-pictures... time for some step by step pictures as to how I finished the rail.

























As you can see, the railing is two pieces. While the railing looks incredibly high by looking at the last two pictures, the playing surface (felt) will be sitting on another oval sheet of wood so about 1 inch or so of the bottom of the white part will not be visible once the felt is installed.

I am currently in the process of wrapping the felt as we speak. I hope to have this entire project done soon. I'll have the rest of the pictures uploaded to this thread once I am done.

I see what you did there.

NorthMetro, looking good so far. That table's going to be heavy to carry?

gogoGO!

Looking very good. Ought to be solid as a rock.

Looks great. Makes me want to start on mine

More pictures:














Still need to stain the base and install it to the above playing surface and rail and get the legs installed.

The rest of the pictures should hopefully come in the next couple of days.

6 Sheets good god that will be heavy