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Tabletop . . . Table

Triggerhappy

Triggerhappy

Stick with Trigger and You'll Make it Through
Location
SoCal
So, yeah, a friend of mine wanted me to post this on social media. But tons of people have done something like this before and I wanted to post someplace more personal where I could more conversational feedback.

So a couples years ago I joined a website called Meetup that, you guessed it, helps schedule real world group events. I did this to combat my growing depression fueled by my isolation at the time. One of the groups I joined was a tabletop gaming group which I've hit off with relatively well.

About two years back I posted in SV's hobby section with the idea to build a tabletop screen for the group. Basically a simple frame to hold a tv or large computer monitor that could then be lain flat on the table and used as a dynamic map. At the time, I didn't really have many tools other than circumstantial access to a miter saw and I really didn't know much of what I was doing.

In the end, that project sort of fell through.

This year, my family's home has been playing host to game nights more often and so, to not inconvenience my mother and grandmother, I decided to resurrect this project to build a tabletop for my family garage, as part of a large endeavor to build a little nerd cave space.

I started with the plan to basically do as I did before. Building a tv enclosure that I could set on a collapsible card table.

But then . . . well . . . feature creep . . .

And if you're going to do it, do it right . . .

And really . . . wouldn't it be cool if . . .

Uhm . . .

In short, I've blow my last three/four months of discretionary income building this :



 
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So...I'm no carpenter. All I can give you is some basic feedback. But honestly it seems pretty darn good. At this point, All you've got to do is sand/smooth the surfaces, and apply a finish where appropriate. Maybe a felt surface for the inner table around the screen.

The only possible negative I can think of is the height. But that I assume you've built it to be as comfortable as existing tables in your house.

But yeah, seems neat. Don't think I'd have the motivation to build something half as spiffy as that.
 
Pred1059 said:
The only possible negative I can think of is the height. But that I assume you've built it to be as comfortable as existing tables in your house.
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I think that may just be the angle of the photo. It's 32 inches, roughly, at the armrest and standard table height is 30 inches and that was done mostly to preserve leg room. After sitting at it, I think I could cut the legs down a bit. They're a bolted on so that's always an option.

Edit : The ultimate goal of this table sort of evolved as I was building it. It started simply as a plan to build approximately to Gaminggeek's table plans, available documented online, which can definitely see in its form factor and overall design. But I gradually redesigned and added my own features as I was going.

For instance, the dice trays being routered into the table top as shallow indentations rather than being cut clean through, since I felt it wood look more finished. The slots in the sides align with an internal cleat that allows a writing surface to be installed and locked securely into place so that players don't scuff my table writing to their stat sheets.

Another part of the design vision was to make the table a jack of all trades. Which also contributed to the final height. While 32 inches is tall for a sitting table, the play area is located two inches lower, exactly at normal table height. And one of the main uses of the upper tabletop is wargaming, which is usually played while standing, so the added height is for the better there.
 
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So. Some additional fun facts about this.

- The basic structure of the table is held together with dowel and glue construction (216 dowels to be exact). There are screws holding on the arm rest tops and holding in the monitor housing, but that's pretty much it. Everything else is pure wood.
- The tv is a 4k monitor driven by a Raspberry Pi 4, 4 gb with built in wifi. I'm not usually our GM, I just tend to host. So I wanted to make it convenient for other GMs so that they don't have to lug a laptop.
- I considered making the sunken play area deep enough to leave a game in session when the tabletop is covered. But in reality, while I could have sunk the player area enough so that standard minis would easily fit (some still will, if just barely) there was no way I could make it deep enough to house the more interesting monsters and or any sort of substantial terrain feature.
- You may have noticed the small notches on the table legs. The legs are actually spaced widely enough that those notches can support 3/4" by 4'x4' boards for storage, painted and textured, they'd make great battlefield terrain inserts to swap with the slats on top. While 4x4 is a sort of small gaming area for war games. It's enough for small skirmishes of 40k or a typical game of infinity.
- The table slats were cut with laps on each side so when they are laid into place they mutually interlock and support each other. This helps to prevent the inner most slats from flexing at their middle.

To do :

- I intend to add a single tasteful decoration in the form of a wood burned Celtic Circle engraved into the tabletop slats. I intend to base the wood burn on this design using an iron to transfer it from an oversize inkjet print and then burning from that :


- I also intend to stain and seal the table. I think right now I want to go with Seddona red for the color as its deepness will help to hide the mix of Douglas Fir and pine wood I used in construction. I entertained using hardwood, but the price would have easily been quadruple what I payed for soft lumber. And I what was ultimately a very experimental project by a novice . . . I just didn't see it making sense.
- I intend to cover the screen with anti-glare plexiglass in order to protect it. It simply can't be understated how fragile flat screen monitors are and I would to be able to place miniatures over the map without worrying so much. If you look closely you can see that a lap was already cut in the lip of the display box to fully support the plexi from the outside.
- I intend to install a bottle opener, because of course I do.
- I'm entertaining the idea of low profile multicolor LEDs. Not for illumination, but rather as mood lighting. I'm also entertaining the idea of some small pc speakers installed under the table to provide a source of music and ambient sound.
 
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This is awesome. It's nice to see one of these builds that is really good, but doesn't make you think 'I'd need to pay a team of professionals to do this'. Like, this actually looks like a thing a person with decent skills can make, and not the project of a veteran furniture maker with a full workshop of tools and no budget limit.

Speakers seem like a bad idea though. Better to just go with a surround system for the garage itself. That way it's multi-purpose and would almost certainly sound better for music. Ambient sounds are another matter, but even then a surround system is probably going to give a better illusion.
 
Anzer'ke said:
This is awesome. It's nice to see one of these builds that is really good, but doesn't make you think 'I'd need to pay a team of professionals to do this'. Like, this actually looks like a thing a person with decent skills can make, and not the project of a veteran furniture maker with a full workshop of tools and no budget limit.

Speakers seem like a bad idea though. Better to just go with a surround system for the garage itself. That way it's multi-purpose and would almost certainly sound better for music. Ambient sounds are another matter, but even then a surround system is probably going to give a better illusion.
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Yeah, it'd be much easier to mount and then you can still control it off a phone or whatever without having to worry about someone accidentally damaging the speakers during play. Plus like a speaker system is all of like $2-300 for a good enough 5.1 setup, and can fit in with a tv if you want to do the whole man cave thing, though you'd probably still have to run wires everywhere.
 
Anzer'ke said:
This is awesome. It's nice to see one of these builds that is really good, but doesn't make you think 'I'd need to pay a team of professionals to do this'. Like, this actually looks like a thing a person with decent skills can make, and not the project of a veteran furniture maker with a full workshop of tools and no budget limit.
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Ahem.

The Sultan :



Possibly so named because you need to be one to afford it.

From Geek Chic's line of ultra premium gaming tables ranging from 5500 all the way up to 16,000 USD.

No wonder these guys went out of business. :p

Also, I'm very glad that I built mine from simple softwood lumber. Softwoods are more than strong enough for basic furniture such as this and I did fuck up several parts due to being an utter novice. In fact, you can see some of the mistakes if you study the images closely.

That said, I'm hardly poorly equipped after a year of buying and acquiring tools.

My power tool set includes

- A Job Saw (compact table saw. These are hella popular with DIYers cause you get a lot of saw for your money)
- A salvaged Miter Saw
- 8 inch circular Saw
- Power Drill
- Impact Drill
- Random Orbit Sander
- Palm Sander
- 2.5 HP Router - > A half dozen router bits + Bit Collars for template cutting
- Jig Saw
- About a 100 assorted drill bits.
- About 50 assorted hand tools from wood chisels and flush saws to mallets.

A good half of what I spent was on tools that should last for many years.

Also






 
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NothingNow said:
Yeah, it'd be much easier to mount and then you can still control it off a phone or whatever without having to worry about someone accidentally damaging the speakers during play. Plus like a speaker system is all of like $2-300 for a good enough 5.1 setup, and can fit in with a tv if you want to do the whole man cave thing, though you'd probably still have to run wires everywhere.
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Possibly. The problem is that the garage in something of a mess so I have to keep my additions as self contained as possible because my mom thinks that garage is synonym with a dumpster for stuff she hasn't used in ten years.
 
Triggerhappy said:
Possibly. The problem is that the garage in something of a mess so I have to keep my additions as self contained as possible because my mom thinks that garage is synonym with a dumpster for stuff she hasn't used in ten years.
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Speaker mounts up high aren't going to get in the way of things too much, and if you keep wiring tidy then it should still work as a dumping ground.
 
Very nice! Have you considered starting your own business making these for a reasonable price? (I'm honestly curious if there's enough demand for this kind of thing to fund a business.)
 
Nicholai said:
Very nice! Have you considered starting your own business making these for a reasonable price? (I'm honestly curious if there's enough demand for this kind of thing to fund a business.)
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Well I repeat that the people who were making them before Geek Chic, went out of business.
 
Triggerhappy said:
Well I repeat that the people who were making them before Geek Chic, went out of business.
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Sorry, I should use more words.

In my experience things like the Sultan kind of price themselves out of the market. I know several people in the town where I live - population a bit below 100k - who looked at those tables and started making their own. (Not everyone finished those projects and none of them are as nice as the one you built.) They just couldn't afford it so they tried making their own.

You didn't give specifics on the monitor for example so I don't know how much that cost but you should have a rough idea of the amount of money you spent on materials. If you mark up enough to make it "worth it" to make more would it be enough to fund the business you'd need to mass produce them? Or would it put you firmly in the "Sultan" range where the business would just fail?
 
Nicholai said:
You didn't give specifics on the monitor for example so I don't know how much that cost but you should have a rough idea of the amount of money you spent on materials. If you mark up enough to make it "worth it" to make more would it be enough to fund the business you'd need to mass produce them? Or would it put you firmly in the "Sultan" range where the business would just fail?
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Iffy.

I'm probably only down about 350 in raw materials making this one. And there are certainly techniques I could apply to reduce the piece count significantly. Thus saving on time and labor.

Even so it still probably wouldn't be cheap. And that's using readily available softwood lumber.

Which is honestly why hardwood is such a feature of professional furniture. Labor time alone will make the furniture expensive enough that value added materials are sensible.

I do think it would be possible to design a 'flat pack' cut from plywood and built for kit assembly at a considerably reduced price.

Edit : If really hell bent on doing it. I think simplification and shameless materials substitution would be essential. As well, the table would absolutely have to be bother multifunction and discreet.

What I mean by that is that the the table would have to make at least an acceptable dining table or coffee table and give no hint of its gaming pedigree while closed up

The idea would be selling gamers on putting their home furniture money towards a gaming table. Which would mean designing a table that their spouse can also live with while not being gamers.

With that in mind. If probably stick to two models likely and absolutely no more than three.

A coffee table replacement.

A square dining table replacement. (Optional)

And a rectangular large dining table replacement.

I would forego even considering the premium features like the extensive hidden cabinetry as, really this mostly gets in the way of playing. At most, I'd include the option for some drawers to store minis maps and the like.

Likewise, I probably wouldn't default to including a monitor. Installing a monitor means supplying power and increasing complexity. Unless you're building it yourself they're a lot of work and they really limit your options in terms of table dimensions.
 
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Anzer'ke said:
This is awesome. It's nice to see one of these builds that is really good, but doesn't make you think 'I'd need to pay a team of professionals to do this'. Like, this actually looks like a thing a person with decent skills can make, and not the project of a veteran furniture maker with a full workshop of tools and no budget limit.
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Had to comment again on this because, well . . .

This :



Nice right?

And completely attainable if you have $800 a woodworking brother to help you and this sort of set up :



TBF I know over quite a few spots in my own design that I could have radically reduced my use of materials I'd had the tools to form the right joints.

Edit : Also, the accessory rails on the one above are far more elegant than the design that I came up with. Strictly speak I could have replicated this pretty well. But since I'm working in softwood I had serious misgiving that the grain structure would hold up to such a fiddly channel. Especially if some of my fellow players decide to put any weight on the desks.

 
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Tools really do make a hell of a difference in making this kind of thing. Even really basic stuff gets a million times more intricate.

Like I'm currently looking for an insert for a certain game, because while there's plenty of blueprints for homemade ones I just don't have the right kind of saw for it.

EDIT: What I really wish was that there was someone selling table tops for this kind of thing, rather than complete pieces of furniture.
 
What do you mean by "tabletop" as opposed to "complete piece of furniture"?

There's not much to a table besides the top and the legs. And the legs aren't the hard part, generally.
 
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