A Little Place at Home, Building a Gaming Table - Part 3.

 

With shift work there are often times when you can't find a decent block of spare time to carry on with a project that you've started...this was one of those.

If you recall, I started the table build, and had to leave it for a few weeks because of conflicting work commitments, but with a slew of days off I managed to crack on with on the table some more.

First job was to get the tin of wood filler opened up and fill some of those unsightly gaps and along the backs of the shelf sections.

This stuff was nasty, definitely an outdoor job, especially as it set the smoke alarms off when the tim was initially cracked!!!!

After about an hour of work, I had all four sides to this stage:

That's the sides all filled, once cured about thirty minutes after application, I got the sander on them and got them nice and smooth, especially important as these are the visible sides once the board is in use.

The next big job to tackle was the felt covering for the game board itself. I had bought a big two meter by one and a half meter sheet of dark grey felt in readiness, and spent a good hour ironing it to get the creases out from how it was packaged.

Once done, I layed it flat on the big table at my friend house where we've been building this, and we used spray fabric glue in a generous fashion on the game board soft foam tiles, the pressed it down firmly, slipping over and smoothing out the main surface.

We flipped it again to use the weight of the board to press it down and left for a late breakfast.

Upon returning, the glue had done it's job and the felt was secure, so we moved onto the next stage which would be adding battening to the underside for strength, marking it out with the woodworking mantra "measure twice, cut once".

And underway with the outside frame in place, at this point I took the time to go round with the knife (not cutting my hand open this time) and removed the excess felt. As we screwed the battens over the folded excess and used them to help secure the material.

"Belt and Braces fashion" never use just one, when two or more is stronger! The central and cross battens were added for extra strength and rigidity.

Flipping it over again to check and it was looking good.

A little tidying at the corners...

And she was ready to be test fitted into the frame... SUCCESS.

At this point I remarked how nice it was being at the stage where you start to see real progress and the end in sight.

He was that confident in the woodwork strength, that we threw a couple of eye-wateringly expensive Forge World models and a piece of terrain down...

Removing the games surface, attention was turned to the topper, a battery was glued and nailed twelve millimetres below the surround surface. This was to act as the base for the topper when it was on the table.

And the topped itself got some strength battens added, these are only crossbeams because the main frame is the one attached to the table which it rests on. The battery's on this piece are placed against the frame and the weight is cantilevered out into the frame for strength!

And flipped out we get "dining table mode" as I'm calling it. This is what the table will love as most of the time when I'm not gaming on it, so we've got to be able to use it everyday.

And then work had to stop, but we're in the homestretch and she's nearly finished!

The next steps are to stain the entire piece to match the dark wood furniture at my house and to sort the magnetic lever which will lift the topper out of the table. 

It shouldn't be too long now until I have her at my house and I am throwing dice across the tabletop.

Soon soon...

Until next time, have nice day...