Reply To: making a table

[Otto Schmidt]

dear Sane Max

Been in the hobby a LONG time and tried many variations of table.  I’ve been rather lucky and have the whole finished basement to myself as a wargame room, and I  had a permanent table several times. THAT! I found was the worst mistake ever. First of all it dominated the room, and you could do little else. I even had constructed it ingeniously on a frame of 2 x 4’s where the 6 by 6 foot table was of two pieces which were hinged and could be raised, revealing below a work-space, desk, office area where I could type, and write and design, paint and do all sorts of things.

Sounds neat huh?

 

It was a disaster. The table top became a catch-all for everything  and every piece of crap I couldn’t find another place for, and my wife found the table top excellent for folding laundry or laying out  things for packing and unpacking (which never truly got packed or unpacked). In the end, it was a major project to clean UP the table top before I could set it up for a game. After two years I broke the whole thing down , sawed it up and it went up the chimney of the wood stove.

I then made a 6 by 9 table that  was easily collapsible and able to be set up.  I have a HUGE living room which is made on what used to be a patio deck above the garage. I built the living room out there so it’s 31′ by 16 ft with glass floor to ceiling on three sides. There’s lots of space and it could accommodate the pieces of table top  which I made to be 6 x9 on a good frame. But the hauling of the 6 x3 ft table tops up from the downstairs was  a pain.

So what I did  is what I now recommend to everyone. I made  eight table tops, each 3ft by 42″ in size.  These are created from simple  finished table top planks available in any Lowes, Home Depot or a lumber yard. These are pieces of wood cut to size, 1 ft by 4 ft, and you put three of them together, screwing them down with 1″ cheap angle iron as a bracing. Then you buy sets of table legs which are about $18 a pair. These are table legs to make cafeteria tables, and they easily fold up. This mounts right through the angle iron. When set up they are sturdy, rigid, and you can assemble them in an infinite number of configurations.  I made eight tables which gives me a max size of 6′ by 12 ft table top, or I can make it smaller if the game is not so expansive.  Further, they can easily be stored in a corner with a light cover over them which looks like a server or piece of furniture not out of place in any living room, and which doubles as a munchies and beer shelf when the table is up. The whole thing cost me about $200 for the 8 sections (the majority cost is the set of legs, and that includes even the false front cover.  I don’t have to haul it around, and even when I do, the individual sections are light and have convenient hand-holds with the legs and struts.

 

I heartily recommend this. A permanent table will turn into an unsightly mess because stuff just accumulates on any flat space in a normal house and after a while you won’t be able to see, or use, the table top for all the household rubbish.
The other great thing is that when I have a game at my place I can have up to a dozen people at a time. When the game is over the game easily breaks down, and three of the tables are left standing, moved to the center of the room and form the dinner table  which I can serve dinner on.  They are also hugely useful for parties, and if you ever have a garage sale, do excellent duty as tables for the stuff you sell. Hopefull you can sell some of the crap that normall festoons a permanent table.

One final thing. The use of the pinewood boards which is called finished pine, can be easily stained and varnished to give it a handsome and attractive finish.  The boards I made my table out of were “painting grade” which means that they are usually used for painted furniture. This was because the boards are made from the “ends of wood” glued and pressured together . It has an odd “parquay” effect which when you stain and varnish looks very handsome and picturesque- very rustic. As I live way out in the country it’s very fitting. I just hit it with a light clear stain, just to bring out the grain and several coats of spar varnish. Looks great.

With the sectional table I can also use only what I need. I’ve put two of them together for a board game or small skirmish, or the whole thing for a big 30mm 18th century battle. I heartily recommend it.  After a life of fiddling and fussing with various arrangements of table, it’s the best one I ever had.  Of course part of the success is that on the living room there are no walls, just floor to ceiling windows, and that’s cathedral ceilings to the roof peak on one end, so the lighting can’t be beat.

 

Otto