Hey everyone. I am about to finish up my poker table. It is 5 foot round raised rail with 8 cupholders in the rail and LEDS. This is the plans i drew up before starting and i'll post some build pictures in the next day or two.
With eight players, you'll have about 23.5 inches per player around the outside edge, and of course less knee room because that is a smaller circle. Is that going to be enough?
Yes i did route the groove in there with a router. And it was really easy actually. I used a circle jig and did it before i cut the top rail piece out. That was the last thing i did... lining it up was pretty easy as well. I cut the outside diameter on all the plywood first. That way i knew they were identical. Then i went back and using my plans i measured from the outside in to the center of the groove and in to the edge of where the lower edge rail needed to be (where the acrylic touches on the bottom ) and marked it. Then i just set my circle cutter jig to make the 2 cuts right where they needed to be.
This is the bit i used for the groove
This is the groove before i cut the top rail out.
And this is the groove after i cut the top rail out. Not the top rail piece is complete.
As far as the seating I'm thinking it should fit 8. I did the calculations and if i remember correctly it is only 2 inches smaller per person using 8 on this table vs 10 on a standard table... although leg room is different.
Once i cut the top rail i had myself and my brother sit at the rail 90° from each other. Then another person sat between us. (We were all actually standing not sitting) but there was plenty of room between us, so that would give us 8 people.. leg room is still to be determined though. But i think it should be good.
Ok, I finally got it finished. Here are all the pics I have throughout the build. I forgot to take some, but I think you should still be able to get the idea of how it went.
This is the top rail that I put two 3/4" spacers to raise the rail up. Then I put 1/8" hardy board on the inside for the led's to attach to and also the outside for the foam to attach to. Then I attached the bottom portion of the rail. I forgot to take pics of that haha. These pictures are the rail sitting upside down. The groove that you see is where the rail vinyl will staple into and also hold the acrylic sheet tight.
I cut out the cupholder rings and attached them, but I don't have pics. I also attached the playing surface foam and fabric(no pics again sorry)
Now I show how I did the foam for the rail. It wasn't wide enough so I had to cut it in the middle and stretch it out on the sides. I saw this method on this site somewhere I think. I attached the rail vinyl in the same way but don't have pics.
Next is the base. I found an old cheap round kitchen table with a pedestal base out of my classified ads here in Utah. I paid $65 for the table. Pulled the top off and used just the pedestal base. I built a square top that I lag screwed to the top of the base and painted it black. I then drilled some holes for the power supply for the LED's.
Now I show how I mounted the pedestal base to the sub-base. I attached it using all thread with lock tight in the hand knobs going into t-nuts. That makes it so I can remove the sub-base from the pedestal base for easier moving and storage.
This shows the pedestal attached to the sub-base. The rail and playing surface mount to the sub-base and can be removed as a whole unit by removing the 4 knobs underneath.
This shows the playing surface mounted to the sub-base. Also the bolts that hold the playing surface to the sub-base
This shows how I attached the rail vinyl to the rail. Remember these pic are with the rail upside down. Then it shows the acrylic in the groove and how it covers all the staples. The acrylic holds itself in the groove and once the rail is placed on the sub-base the acrylic is pinched between the sub-base and the groove top to bottom, and the playing surface and the rail itself side to side. then the groove holds the top of the acrylic side to side.
The rail attaches to the sub-base the same as the playing surface using bolts that attach into t-nuts that were put into the wood before covering.
Now here it is finished. I couldn't get the vinyl to not bunch up so I needed to fold it here and there. but I may redo it eventually. Let me know if you have any questions.
And yeah after it was together my brother and i sat at the table right next to each other in front of the cup holders. We are both around 6' 1" and about 240-250 lbs. Are arms didn't touch when we were using our normal posture, but our knees did slightly. But it wasn't bad. I still haven't played 8 on it yet but i think it will be just fine.