Thursday, August 20, 2009

Building a gaming table – Part One




After spending too much time tossing around with the idea of buying myself the Citadel Realm of Battle board I thought to myself…”bugger spending that much money on a board” and set to work on building my own. I decided to go for the classic 8’x 4’ from my old gaming days instead of the standard 6’x 4’.

While I was building this board my wife decided to take some photos as I was working so I thought I should put together some basic instructions on how I built my board. Sure, it might not be the perfect way of building one and I may ramble on a bit…..but here it goes. I will break the build, texture and painting into different parts.

Tools:
Saw, drill, screw driver, clamps, tape measure

Materials:
7x 40mm x 20mm strips of timber:
5x 1200mm (4 ft) long
2x 2400mm (8 ft) long

4 x MDF panels: 1200mm x 600mm x 6mm thick

PVA Glue (wood glue)
Wood screws

Instructions:

1) Find a large area to work in. The frame is large and relatively flimsy until it is near completion. Also, make sure you inspect all your timber and mdf. I found out halfway through my build that one sheet of mdf and some timber was too short. Very frustrating.

2) Measure and cut the small strips of timber as they will need to fit inside the frame. In my case my long strips of timber were 18mm wide so I cut exactly 36mm from the end of each of my short strips.



3) Due to having slightly different heights in the timber I purchased (the long strips were 40mm high and the small ones were 36mm high) also had to ensure that all my strips were flat on the same edge. To help with this I made sure that wrote a “right side up” arrow on each strip.



4) Using the timber strips I proceeded to build a basic wooden frame to support the mdf panels. The strips were drilled and screwed together, making a 8 ft x 4 ft frame. The strips were spaced evenly to allow the mdf sheets to sit from the end edge to approximately the middle of an internal support strip.

5) Apply PVA glue to the topmost edges of the timber strips and place the mdf panels onto the frame. Once you are happy with the position of the panels, use a number of clamps to hold the panel in place until the PVA glue dries.







6) I recommend using an old damp rag to remove any excess PVA glue from the joins.

7) Once the PVA glue is dry, drill and screw in a few screws through the mdf panels into the long edges of the frame to give the table that little bit extra support. (I personally added 4 screws per panel – 2 on each side)

So that’s it for part one. Please provide any feedback if something isn’t clear enough (this is my first instructional type thing)

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for posting this. It is a project I've been considering for myself and I really appreciate seeing how someone else went about it before I get started.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks mate. I will get onto the next two stages over the next couple days. If you have any specific questions pop me a message and I will do my best to answer ASAP.

    ReplyDelete

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