I convinced myself it’d be too hard. Then I was convinced by Adam at work who has done quite a bit of stuff like this that it would be easily doable. He offered to help and I wanted to build. NOT wanting to buy it premade, I read way too much info on types of foam/fabric/etc that make up a poker table. Obsessed and now an internet expert, I came into the shop at work on Saturday and started getting things together.
3/4″ ply and 3/4″ midgrade stuff that at the moment i’m forgetting the name of. Grabbed another board on the way out that never got used.
First thing we did was build a compass and made it a 7′ table. Perfect arches that were 24″ from center
after cutting off the ends, we built and glued down a brace. It really helped.
Flipped it over, marked the other side, and puts some screws in.
starting to paint. It took a couple cans of cheep stuff laying around the shop, until I pulled out a can of good spray paint which did the job nicely.
Made some extra support for the legs to mount to, painted and legs attached. Worked out quite nicely.
I was getting picky on what foam I would use, being an internet expert on all things poker table now, I ended up with some 1/4″ volara from a mom and pop foam/fabric store. Cut and trimmed with a razor blade (new blade works wonders). The foam had a tendency to curl and not lay exactly flat on the edges. Lots of adhesive spray, some tape, and some weight overnight solved that problem.
At the very least, I had built a table I could lay some cloth over and use for poker if needed. This was 2-3 days before it needed to be finished.
Using the same method as the table, we made the rail (at my choosing of 5″), did the math made two new arcs and did a bunch of cutting on the cheap wood.
It started to look like something once I marked the holes for the cupholders.
i quickly learned not to leave heavy things sitting on the foam for more than a few minutes.
Because of the way the rail overlapped the table, I had to cut out complete holes in the rail, and partial holes on the table in order for my cupholders to fit through both layers. This required a good bit of lining things up exactly, lots of thinking ahead and marking with various sharpies. I was to do this part alone, so Adam left me with some reminders aka instructions for me to do over my lunch hour/after work before he hopped back in.
I was going at most everything with the jigsaw, but Adam pulled out the router bit on the dremel and started making light work of the partial holes. So I gave it a try…
I still preferred my jigsaw due to the fact the router walked on me quite a bit.
The foam I got for the rail was going to be a couple inches short to do it all as one piece, so it was creatively split up into 4 pieces. Each marked to remind us exactly where they go on the rail.
Sprayed adhesive on the table and foam, wait until it gets tacky, then lay the foam. Table and rail now padded.
We started with the rail and flipped it over onto my super hard to find black whisper vinyl. Hit 3 Joann’s to finally find it. I saw 1 other guy in my 3 visits to that store, and somehow he started chatting with me about some stuff I can’t remember.
Having read extensively on this part of the build, I was not looking forward to it. We had a staple gun and muscles, there wasn’t anything else that was needed except patience and stubbornness.
A few hours later…
About this time I decided to finally open up my speed cloth and lay it on the table. I was stoked to see the color, texture and cool factor of this stuff.
back to the rail after the cupholders have been put in.
back to the underside of the table after we trimmed and stapled the cloth.
Some proper length wood screws to connect the table and rail and that was it.
Crappy cell phone pic of me finishing up some small details at the end.
It got to sit in our warehouse at work for most of friday to which I got to hear many opinions from people who have not built a poker table (I checked) about what they thought. I trust the opinion of people who work with this kind of stuff weekly over those who do not, any day of the week.
The following night, where everyone there seemed to be impressed by the table (probably moreso that I was the one who built it)
1) speed cloth rules
2) there’s so many mistakes in it. most of which will go unnoticed. Otherwise the table came out great and was planned on being used a couple times quite soon last I checked. This one was built to fit 8, but fit 9 quite nicely last Friday night.
3) quite proud that I got it done in time, but build poker table, THEN schedule poker night, not the other way around.
4) the next one (would need to sell this one first) would be much nicer and more intricate. It’d take twice as long, but we’ll see how much this one gets used.
5) I need to do stuff like this more often, just for the learning experience.
more random pics of the process
