Hello Home Poker Forum. This is the story behind my first table build. I hope you find it as enjoyable a read as much as I enjoyed the table building experience. Here is a little background.



It all started with a phone call from my Dad (Hal). He had been retired for a few years, and enjoying the summers sailing around the beautiful islands and bays of Lake Michigan. The winters in Wisconsin however, offer little outdoor excitement for a retiree. He likes to spend the cold months down in his basement workshop making furniture for the kids in the family.


So Dad calls up in September and tells me that since he's finished the golf club center (bag and gear storage) for my sister and brother-in-law, he needed a new project, and it was my turn to receive the gift of woodcraft.


I didn't know what I really needed, although I mentioned my old coffee table had been gnawed on by my dear deceased labrador, Jackson. He asked me to ponder the thought, and get back to him.


The weeks go by, and I haven't thought about the project, but as I'm setting up for a home game, I fetch my old $100 Sporting Goods store poker table from the back room. I look at the sad green felt, awash with the lint remnants of last months laundry. The idea pops into my head that I really could use a new poker table. I recall our conversation and I call up Dad. Soon we are exchanging emails about poker table design ideas.


Of course, I used the number one resource that I could trust, the Home Poker Forum. I did some investigation to find out what pitfalls to avoid, and what most people desire in a poker table. I already had an idea of what I wanted, namely a table different from the standard green felt/black rail that has been the mainstay of the home poker game.

So a little about me:

I am an avid home poker player, attending a regular monthly dealer's choice game. Our game has seven players, with hosts rotating two months in a row each. This game can get to fairly high stakes ($20 max. bet). I also host the odd cash game here and there, and enter a couple tourneys a month. There is also a low-stakes neighborhood game I attend once in awhile, and plan to host in upcoming months.

I have a carpentry background, with experience in both rough framing and trim carpentry. Those skills came in handy during this project, as I imagine it would take the average Joe a few hours longer to build a nice poker table.

I live in the far Northwest suburbs of Chicago, but we are building the table up in Green Bay.

Dad has a killer workshop in the basement of his humble Green Bay, WI abode. I can't begin to express how much easier it is to work on a project like this with every tool you need right there at your disposal. It made it easy to work on multiple parts of the project at the same time.

It's late October, and Dad and I agree that we need to work on the table together. I usually go "Up Nort" for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, so this will give us plenty of time to work on the project. Having done some research, I have decided that:


A) I will not have a racetrack on this table. I like the look of a nicely stained racetrack, but then I polled my fellow gamblers on this subject. Most of them said that it was difficult to slide chips from the track to the felt. One guy said that he hated the "clacking" sound the chips make on a racetrack. Racetrack OUT.

B) I wanted a different color rail than the standard black. I decided on a burgundy color. I found the Merlot Whisper Vinyl at JoAnn Fabrics website at about a 40% discount. I had this shipped directly to Green Bay.

C) I needed cupholders at the table, since my space for beverage placement is extremely limited. After consulting several threads in this forum, I went with the jumbo stainless cupholders. I am hoping to keep spills to a minimum.

D) I wanted some cool-looking pedestals to hold the table up, and the coolest ones I've seen were some aluminum-trimmed black ones that Slidey had built on his convertible dining room table build. I asked Slidey in his thread, and he ok'ed the plagiarism (thanks, Slidey!) Here is his version:




E) To go with the burgundy vinyl rail, and the stainless cupholders, I decided on a gray felt. The only problem was, I didn't like the rough feel of speed felt. A couple of friends have applied the speed felt, and I wanted to go a different direction. I ordered samples of suited speed cloth, unsuited speed cloth and nylon velvet speed cloth (from YAT). After much deliberation, I ordered the nylon velvet. I was hoping that I didn't have an issue with cards not gliding, or gliding well in only one direction. I have seen a few of these complaints of the nylon velvet here in Home Poker. I had never played on this surface, but the sample was soft and inviting. Fingers crossed. Also got YAT's 1/4" Volara closed cell foam for under the felt. This seems to be the standard.

F) I wanted to add a little extra detail to make the table pop. I have seen some examples of chrome "clavos", or buttons applied to a sub-rail under the main rail. I decided that I would go this route, and also ordered up 200 of these.

Cool boss, looking forward to seeing the finished product! First one is always memorable

The last requirement I had for my table, was that it be semi-portable. Since my basement project is still in the planning stage, the only place to play is in my smallish living room. I have to move the coffee table and easy chair out of the room in order to get the poker table and chairs to fit. After the game, I used to fold up the old table and return it to storage. I wanted to be able to do (somewhat) the same thing with this one.

The goal was to make the pedestal bases removable from the top. If at all possible, the vinyl rail and cupholders were to be removable as well.


So...

After a long trip, and a full day of turkey and wine, it's down to the shop to start working on the table. Dad already has the 3/4" Baltic birch plywood that we will use for the table top. I also asked him to get a piece of 1/2" sanded plywood to act as a base for the top. I want to glue up the sanded plywood under the table top to span the pedestal bases, and also to give me something to anchor through.

Most of that Friday morning was spent discussing the layout and planning the project.

That afternoon, we finally got around to jig-sawing radii on the two sheets of plywood. I've got the steady hand, so this was my task. I went about 1/8" big on these, since Dad had made a couple radius templates out of scrap MDF. We were able to clamp these templates onto the plywood and router a super-clean radius on both sheets.

We glued up the two pieces of plywood with a rolled on coat of premium wood glue. We fastened it with some 1" brads.

I woke up Saturday with a goal to finish the rail piece before I had to return home on Sunday. We had the leftover ring from the playing surface to work with, so I carefully jig-sawed my way around the radius. Near the tight part of the corner, we had some chipping out from the end grain cut. Dad is a whiz when it comes to Bondo, so he did the filling and sanding. He also filled some minor voids in the 1/2" base plywood.


I needed a ring (1 1/2" wide) to sit under the rail to hide some of the felt attachment that might be visible underneath. We didn't have any useable plywood left, so we ended up using the MDF template we had from the main radius. I filled in the center area with plywood.





This lip of MDF/Plywood is the perfect place to run a series of clavos (later) to really make it pop. I've seen this on some of the table builds here.


We also laid out the cupholders on the ring and drilled pilot holes. We debated for awhile about whether to drill the 3 3/4" holes in the rail with the hole saw yet, or should we wait until after the foam and vinyl is applied?


Interesting note about the cupholders. I was just thinking about equal spacing all the way around, but Dad pointed out that it might get tight for knee knocking around the radius. We stood next to each other and pretended to swig a beer with elbows flying. As it turns out, he was right, and we adjusted the location of the four cupholders surrounding the long-end axis cupholder in order to get equal space for each player. I'm so glad that we didn't miss this detail. It would have bugged me every time I play at the table.

I wanted to do the vinyl myself, but I let Dad talk me into letting his boating friend (who happened to have a local upholstery business) do the work. His name is Dale. We took the ring, the lip piece, and the vinyl to Dale to do the upholstery work. We stabilized the lip for transport with an x-brace, just in case. On the way over, I came up with an idea to make just the lip the black vinyl, to make it stand out from the rest of the burgundy rail.

Dale had several thicknesses of HD foam, and I selected the 1 1/2" stuff. I couldn't really find this thickness online (1" was common), but I didn't investigate it too much. Dale says that he can have it back well before Christmas, when I will return to town to continue the work. He also suggests "welting", which is a bead of rolled vinyl that sits at the bottom of both the inside and outside of the rail. This will prevent cards from sliding under the rail, so it seems like a great idea.

I left town on Sunday morning, happy with the meager progress that we had made.

excellent read so far! can't wait to see the end result. i'm in the planning stages of 3 tables right now. 1 for my house, and 2 for my vape shop. Imma copy you and slidey like a mofo

If you guys have any questions feel free to ask. Better to get some input up front than guess at it and regret. For your question regarding the cupholder holes, always cut prior. You especially would not want to upholster the whole rail with foam and vinyl and then try to cut.

I was leery of this as well, and we discussed it the week after Thanksgiving. Imagine the jagged teeth of the holesaw grabbing and tearing into the vinyl. Yikes! Dad went down to the shop with some practice material, and got mixed results. We decided that we had to drill the holes through the rail first. He went back to Dale's shop to pick up the raw ring. He then placed it onto the table plywood and clamped it. He used our pilot holes and drilled all of the holes for the cupholders with the 3 3/4" hole saw. The holes were also cut through the table top. He touched up the cuts with a little Bondo, and then dropped it back off with Dale, and here is the picture of the upholstered rail (he picked it up with his trailer).




Dale cut out the 1 1/2" foam around the holes, but left the vinyl for us to carefully star-cut out later. I was very happy with the results.

I had three days off for the upcoming holiday. We planned to build the pedestals over Christmas...

While I'm surfing Amazon for just the perfect gifts for the good little boys and girls, Dad is busy working on the pedestal plan. Earlier, we had bounced back and forth a bunch of ideas. In the end, the picture I sent him of Slidey's Black/Aluminum pedestals closed the deal. These were cool-looking peds, that didn't seem too difficult to build. The tapered aspect of these peds appealed to us both. I was pumped to fabricate these things.

I was at this point that I insisted that we have a larger pedestal top in order to accept through-fasteners to the table top. I had in mind some sort of bolt (1/4"?), with a large, easily turned head or knob. This would pass through my pedestal top, to anchor into threaded inserts in the 1/2" plywood sub-base. I wanted to have enough room to turn the knob for easy disassembly.


Here are the preliminary pedestal drawings he sent me:





We ended up deciding on shrinking the pedestal boxes to taper from 26" to 20" (rather than 28" to 20"). We were worried about knocking knees. It seemed that these should still support the table just fine.


These pedestals will differ from Slidey's in that we went with 1 less layer of trim detail at the bottom, and with the platform base edges rounded over, rather than clad in aluminum.


Dad has ordered the aluminum for the pedestals, and they are scheduled to arrive before I do. We have a lot to do over the break, but we have a plan.


Wednesday was Christmas Eve. This was the time the whole family could get together, and I would arrive around noon (wine in hand, gifts in car) to help cook dinner. The night will be dedicated to family, but we figured we had Christmas, Friday and Saturday to cut, assemble, and trim the pedestals. Dad says he is comfortable doing the aluminum work himself, so it wasn't really a big deal if we couldn't get there. Hopefully, we could make it to the paint stage before I had to leave again...

Christmas Eve for me was a full day of travel, eating and family time. I was out like a light at 9pm.


Christmas started with a cup of Door County Coffee's Highlander Grogg, an excellent local coffee blend of Irish cream and caramel, with enough kick to get me motivated. Dad and I are down in the shop shortly after 7 to get started. Yesterday, he showed me that he had made all of the cuts for the pedestals, including the angles, bases and tops. Awesome.


That morning we mock-assembled a pedestal and took a look. Both of us agreed that it still looked too big. Would it be a big deal to take 2" off? After all, we do have this gigantic Canadian table saw, just begging to be fired up. We tried ripping 2" off, and it looked okay. We also took 2" in width off, bringing the final pedestal dimension to 10" wide by a taper of 24" to 18". This looked like the perfect size, so we milled down the other pedestal parts as well. We spent Christmas day assembling pedestal boxes (glue and brads), and quit a little early to gorge on some leftovers.


That Friday, I went to work on the trim pieces for the pedestals. These are the bands surrounding the top and bottom of the tapered area. I made them out of 1x6 poplar, ripped in half. I knew that I wanted a super-tight mitre at all of the corners, and would not accept any imperfections there.


Dad was rounding over the edges of the pedestal bases, and filling the router chips with his favorite pink compound, Bondo. He also had to round the outer edges of the pedestal tops to match the arc of the sub-base plywood. Afterwards, he went to work filling and sanding the pedestal boxes, preparing for primer.


I had to screw around with the angles behind the trim pieces to get them exactly right. For instance, I had to rip an angle vertically on the top trim ring at the taper to account for the expanding angle. At the bottom, I had to run the mitre long, to compensate for the taper void. I knew the angle was 9 degrees (tangentially - thank you, Trig class), so it was just a matter of ripping and fitting each piece (16 total). I glued and nailed them together, and gave them a good sanding with 150 grit, then 220 grit sandpaper. Here are the assembled pedestals:



I was very happy at this point, so we quit and went out for a delicious Wisconsin Friday Night Fish Fry and a well-deserved beer.

Saturday arrives, and I want to get the attachment points set before we paint. We drill holes in the pedestal tops for the bolts to pass through. I leave an inch of space between the trim piece and the hole to allow for turning the finger bolt. The table top goes upside down on the workbench, with the pedestals upside down on top. We mark where the pedestal holes line up. I remove the peds and drill the eight holes through the 1/2" sub-base, and a little bit into the 3/4" table top. I screw 5/16" threaded inserts into the table to accept my finger bolts.

At first I had the holes tight through the pedestal tops, but some of the threaded inserts didn't go in perfectly square. I had to enlarge the bolt holes to 3/8" It worked out though, since the bolt head base is about 3/4" in diameter.


Here is the underside of the table, ready for paint. We have inserted other bolts into the holes to keep the paint out.




We aren't ready for paint, however. The shop needs a good clean up. We plan on spraying the topcoat, and don't want to have dust floating onto the finish. It took awhile to clean the shop. Even with the dust collection system, there is still a layer of dust on all surfaces.

We get it cleaned up and head out to the paint store. We got a dark tinted, high-build primer to go on first. The topcoat would be satin black. We got a whiz roller (small version of the regular roller) to apply primer. Dad had several brushes in the shop to get the corners.


We got back to the shop and coated both pedestals and the underside of the table top with grey primer. It was getting late, and the primer had a 4 hour dry time. We would wake up Sunday, do some vacuum sanding, and get a coat of finish applied. In the meantime, I head over to my step-siblings house for a Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale (or three) and some solid chill time.

Next thing I know, it's 6 in the morning and I roll off the couch 10 miles from the workshop. Ugh, need to get back and start some coffee before Dad gets up...

I slide in the side door and shower up. Dad wakes up with the smell of coffee brewing, and we are off to sand and spray. We get a coat on everything before I had to pack up and leave. Dad hits the remaining two coats of finish over the next few days. Here are the results:

If your Dad runs out of projects next winter, maybe we can send in requests?

Everything looks great. Keep the posts coming.

Looks awesome. I really like the beveled edges on the bottom pieces

Thank you! Yes, Dad paid extra attention to this area with filler and sanding.




...So the aluminum finally arrives at the Green Bay home center. They blame the holidays for the delay, eh? That's ok except for the fact that the both the angle pieces and the flat stock has been scratched during shipping. No rub protection, you see. The agree to re-order with packing material this time.

Dad is off to visit my favorite Uncle Dave at his new digs in San Diego. Lucky him. Sub-zero, Great White North turns to sun, sand, and fish tacos. I won't be able to make it up the next two weeks anyways, since I landed a small side job, and I played in a tournament the next Saturday (don't ask).

Dad gets back from vacay, and armed with an aluminum-cutting mitre box blade zips through the aluminum work. His excursion into metal cutting yields fantastic results:



I plan on going up north Super Bowl weekend to apply the foam and felt, and also to slice out the cupholders. We plan to transport via trailer early Sunday morning.

The base turned out really nice.

Oh yeah that's cool.

Once again, I would like to credit Slidey for his design.

It's the Wednesday before the Super Bowl, and as I make the commute home from work, I hear that there is a snowstorm taking dead aim on Chicago. It is set to arrive Saturday evening and continue throughout the day Sunday. This really sucks, since we plan to transport the table Sunday morning.

I get in to work Thursday and request Friday off. Luckily, the to-do list at work is not as pressing as normal. I am granted the day, and call Dad to let him know that we will be working on the table tomorrow, transport set for Saturday morning. He gives the ok, and I head up Thursday night. We have to finish tomorrow, so it's an early night.

We wake up Friday and I get some more of that coffee I'm so fond of. The first order of business is to felt the table top. I have seen builders do a half-and half approach, and we lay a board in the middle so that we can attack one side. I used the 3M Super 77 spray adhesive that seems to be the standard 'round these parts. I only sprayed the wood, and not the foam. Dad held up the end while I carefully used my arm to flatten from the middle to the end. Afterwards, I used a heavy roller to roll it out again, just to be sure there were no air bubbles. We switched sides, and glued down the other side of the foam in the same fashion.

As the adhesive set up, we debated for awhile on where to cut the foam. We ended up setting the rail on the table and checking clearances. I wanted the rail to fit tightly without having to attach it to the table. As it turned out, the best way to achieve this was to wrap the foam to the bottom of the base plywood, and staple it on the edge. If we rolled the foam over and around and attached it to the bottom, the big corner gets it the way of the rail, and makes it too tight. Here is the foamed table:

We laid the felt on over the table, but I noticed a problem. The area that had been wrapped tightly for shipping had a wrinkle that I couldn't flatten out.






Dad wanted to iron it, but I was afraid of it melting (man, that would suck). I called up the folks at YAT. They told me definitely NO ironing. Just stick it in the dyer with a slightly damp towel set to "delicate". Run the dryer a few minutes, and pull it out and check. My felt took about 6 minutes to become wrinkle-free.

I used the "light hazing method", where I sprayed a thin coat of adhesive to the foam only. I did half the table at a time, the same way as the foam. I rolled it out in the same fashion as well.

After the adhesive set up, We used the electric stapler to pull and attach the felt. Around the radius, we folded over the felt into pie-shaped wedges, and stapled these folds in the middle. I ran the felt all the way under to where the sub-base plywood is, and used that as a pull-point, stapling right in the corner. A cut and trim around cupholders required stapling first around each cupholder.

We're getting so close, I can taste it. We take the table parts to the other room for assembly. These knobs I got really make it easy to attach:




We set the rail in place and carefully cut/test/re-cut/test/final cut the holes for the cupholders. Most of them were cut three ways in a star-shaped pattern.





Here is a picture of the edge of the rail. The main rail is Merlot Whisper vinyl, while the sub-rail is black vinyl. You can see the welting between.

I originally thought of just the jumbo stainless cupholders for the table, but my Dad had some old ones from the boat lying around. They are hard black plastic, with a smaller diameter hole near the bottom (for 12 oz. beverages). The stainless ones happen to fit perfectly inside the plastic ones, so early on, Dad ordered up 10 new plastic ones. Imagine that...convertible cupholders!

Nice. Great color combinations.

Did I miss the part about joining the sub and outer rail material? I see the welting photo, but how did you do that?

Yes, I missed that part.

I just used about 10 - 1 5/8" brads to attach these together. Straight through the vinyl, sub-rail, and main rail plywood. This was done while waiting for the foam and felt adhesives to dry.

Looks great. First time out, that's a beautiful table. I can probably speak for the rest of us builders in saying I'm sure you hated doing the rail more than anything else. I've gotten pretty decent at doing them now, I can upholster them in about 90 mins now but theyre the worst ****ing part of the build. Did you use 2" foam? Sorry I didn't see many pics on the rail portion of your build. Again nicely done, turned out great!