Easy DIY Gaming Table (no woodworking)

[Truename]

My wife and I have always wanted a gaming table, but the price always seemed out of reach. This year, we had some money saved up, so we took a second look... and the prices were still out of reach. We want a nice big 4'x6' table, and that's expensive and hard to find. We did find the GameFold table, which isn't expensive at all, but reports on Reddit about its quality are pretty mixed.

In the course of looking further, though, we found this thread on BoardGameGeek. The video on the front page sums it up, but the short version is that you can use extruded aluminum rails, laminate flooring, and a game mat to make a very nice portable gaming surface.

On the second page of that thread, Jesse Pohlman took the same concept and added legs. The resulting table looks great, and I feel like the aluminum rails will actually have more utility than a fancy wooden table.

So I'm going to give it a try! I'm going to document my progress in this thread. If you're reading this in The Future, the next post should have final results and build instructions.

 

[Truename]

[reserve for final results and build instructions]

 

[Truename]

I like the general idea of the Game Garage table, but I have reservations about the specifics. The biggest one is the use of marine tape to attach the surface to the table. I'm not worried about the strength of the tape, but I am worried about the repairability. Once the tape is in place, the table isn't coming apart again.

I'm also concerned about the strength of the floor laminate. In Jesse Pohlman's table version, it looks like he's using hardwood rather than laminate, and he supports it with additional cross beams under the table. I think his table is also smaller than ours.

Finally, I have zero woodworking tools and experience. Jesse's table has the wood and gaming mat sitting on top of the supports, which means you need to have a very precise cut to avoid gaps between the edge of the table and the surface. I'd like something I can build without that level of precision, preferably with minimal woodworking.

So my thought was to clamp the table surface to the bottom of the table and clamp it in place. That way the surface could be larger than the rails, which allows plenty of tolerence for sloppy cuts and should lead to a nice clean edge. In my next post, I'll share my initial drawings.

 

[Truename]

As I said, I'm going to clamp the table surface to the frame from the bottom. Plywood comes in 4'x8' sheets and the lumber store will cut it down to 4'x6' for me. With an inch of tolerance on all sides, that means the table's interior dimensions will be 5'10" x 3'10". The frame's rails will be 3" wide by 1.5" deep, so the total dimensions of the table will be 6'4" x 4'4".

Here's my initial drawings. (The numbers are 80/20 part numbers.) There's a single 3"x1.5" rail across the middle of the table and four aluminum plates on the side. They'll hold up the plywood and clamp it to the frame.

Astute readers will notice some problems with this design. More in my next post.

 

[Truename]

There's a saying: "Any idiot can build a bridge that stands. It takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands."

In other words, it's easy to make something that doesn't fall down if you overbuild it. But to save costs on materials, you need to carefully engineer your design to be just strong enough to not fall down.

I'm not an engineer. I'm overbuilding the crap out of this thing. I hope. That means I'm probably spending more money than I need to.

I went to the lumber store and bought a nice piece of plywood. I went with 3/4" plywood, which is very strong, and I probably could have gotten away with 1/2". But this is a big table and somebody is probably going to stand on it at some point, so I wanted to err on the side of strength. I also went with the nice AC plywood, which is the premium grade, pre-sanded plywood. All together, it cost $91.08. (The cashier at Parr Lumber thought this was a cool project and gave me a bit of discount. Sweet!)

I brought it home and put it up on wooden blocks to simulate my planned support system. Then I walked around on the plywood, and even jumped up and down a bit, to see how well it could handle the load.

The problems were immediately obvious. The plywood flexed in the middle, between the central rail and the edge rails. But worst was the corners. They had no support and flexed badly.

Back to the drawing board. I changed everything to go width-wise instead of length-wise, put it back up on blocks, and tested it again. This time, success. Stable as a rock.

 

[Truename]

I tested the plywood, so I know it's solid, but how much weight will the aluminum rails take? I have a lot of choices for size and weight.

The 80/20 catalog gives this formula for how much weight a rail can take:

(L^3 * W) / (48 * E * I) = D

L is length, W is the load in pounds, E is modulus of elasticity, and I is moment of inertia, and D is deflection in inches. E and I are provided in the catalog, so I can use this formula to calculate how much weight a rail can take before bending too much.

Originally, I was thinking I'd use 3"x0.75" rails to support the plywood. But when I ran the numbers, assuming a maximum 1/4" deflection and 43.7 lbs for the plywood (its actual measured weight), those rails would only support 36.8 additional pounds. The load would be spread out by the plywood, and there are multiple supports, but I don't know how to calculate that. It doesn't seem like it would be enough handle a person standing on the table.

So I went to the next size up: 3"x1.5". That can support 494.7 extra pounds with a standard rail and 327.4 extra pounds for an ultra-light (cheaper) rail. With a 3x safety factor, that gives me between 109-164 pounds. With a 1" deflection, that increases to 445-670 even with the safety factor. Given that the plywood will spread the weight, that seems like plenty.

But I'm not an engineer, so I chose the standard rail rather than the ultralight, just to be safe.
A similar calculation went into the edge rails. The longest edge can only support 142 extra pounds at a 1/4" deflection (no safety factor). But the worst somebody will do is lean on them, and they can take up to 65.5 extra pounds before they flex as much as 1/8", and that's not accounting for the load being spread out by the plywood. That seems super stable. Worst case, if someone walks on it, they'll support 302 extra pounds (with a 3x safety factor) at a 1.5" deflection.

Finally, the legs. I'm using 1.5"x3" legs so I don't have to worry about cutting notches in the plywood and mat. I'm a bit concerned about the legs supporting such a large table, though. I'm sure they'll be fine vertically, but what about people pushing on the table?

I treated the legs like a cantilever, which I'm not sure is correct. The formula for a cantilevered load, according to the 80/20 catalog, is (L^3 * W) / (3 * E * I) = D.

A shaky table would be super annoying, so I limited the max deflection to 1/8". That leads to a maximum of 126.4 pounds of horizontal force in one direction and 462.2 pounds of force in the other (no safety factor). I think that'll be okay. If someone runs into it hard, the legs will flex more, but that's no big deal. It'll only flex 1" under 1,011 pounds of force. That should be nice and stable.

I'm probably overbuilding this, but I knew that going in.

PS: In case it's not obvious: I am not an engineer! If you decide to build your own table, you're responsible for your own safety calculations. Don't use mine, they're probably completely wrong.

 

[Truename]

Picture time! I mocked up the table using the 4'x6' plywood to get a sense of its size. The white paper border is where the aluminum rail will be. It's sitting on top of a folding table, and it's stable enough that my gaming group was able to use it for our actual game.

This is a big table! Once my gaming group was seated, though, I still wished we had more space. That's where the rails will come in. I'm planning on building accessory tables that hook into the rails. I also have the rest of the plywood (2'x4') which I'm going to turn into a DM's shelf. Depending on how I mount it, that could extend the table another one to two feet.

 

[Truename]

I've been in touch with Teco Technology in California. They're an 80/20 distributor, and they offer design assistance. What that means is that they'll take the rough drawings you provide (like mine) and turn them into a proper CAD design with all the fasteners and so forth figured out.

80/20 is more expensive than other suppliers, but this service is invaluable to me. I'm willing to pay a bit more. We're working out the final details and I expect I'll be placing an order soon. The price is higher than I was hoping, but that's a consequence of overbuilding. It's looking like it will be about $1,500 for the 80/20 materials and about $2,000 total once all costs are included (shipping, plywood, and the gaming mat). That's a lot, but it's still a lot less expensive than the alternatives, given the size. And I actually think the aluminum rails are going to be stronger and more functional than most gaming tables.

I'll see if I can attach their CAD drawings in the future. The design assistance service is free, on the assumption you'll order through them, so I'm not allowed to share the drawings without permission. If you'd like to contact them yourself, their phone number is 925-426-8500 and their email is sales@tecotechnology.com.

 

[The Soloist]

A 12" x 12" structure of 1" x 1" studs with a 1/4" plywood sheet glued on each side, and frame by a 3" x 1/2" border is the sturdiest and lightest I can think of.

 

[Truename]

And that brings us to the present! I'm a bit concerned that my "clamp" approach to attaching the plywood to the base isn't going to work out, so I'm going to order a subset of the parts on Monday so I can test it. If all goes well, I'll place the rest of the order. I expect it'll be a week or so before that first test order arrives.