Yesterday I went by my local hardwood store to look for some boards for the table leaves. The sapele selection was pretty bad: there were only one or two boards I’d consider acceptable for the top. I spoke with Dan, my favorite sales guy there, and he said they weren’t getting any more until next Friday (Nov. 17). That doesn’t give me enough time to build the leaves in time for Thanksgiving…

He mentioned that they did have some 1/4” sapele plywood though. I was going to need some for an upcoming project anyway, so I quickly thought up an alternate top in my head: cut the 1/4” ply to fit the vault opening of the table, and then build a simple support frame underneath (out of 2x4s probably) to support it and bring it up to the level of the rest of the table. That should work just fine for a couple of weeks until I can go through the new sapele stock and pick out some good boards!

I built the frame and the temporary top this weekend. Thanksgiving is a go!

The veneer is a lighter color than the rest of the wood, but it’s only temporary (although it would darken a bit over time).

We used the table for the first time! Played Steam Up.

We’ve had a couple play sessions on the table now (pictured below we’re playing Parks). We haven’t actually played with the player stations open yet (the two games we played are pretty simple and we just kept pieces in the playarea). But, I did already learn some lessons and have some upgrades to make!

I noticed that when the player stations are closed, everyone leans on them constantly. They’re only 3/4” thick, and I can feel my own bowing slightly when weight is added, so I know everyone else’s is, too. To combat that I’m going to add a support that will keep them from deforming in the center: the removable panel that goes in the front, I’m going to add a cross-brace coming out of the center so that it looks like an upside down T. That will support the center of the player station when closed. I thought about doing something similar just to fight against gravity trying to make those panels sag over time, but when I see people standing up over the table and putting ALL of their body weight on them, I got real nervous and knew I better add them sooner rather than later.

In addition, the 1/4” plywood that forms the play surface still sags a bit with gravity and makes the drawers bind up (not to mention that just pushing down on it where it’s not supported by the frame underneath causes some visible deformation). I’m going to replace that with 1/2” plywood soon. That means I’ll have to make a new play surface for it, since the fabric is glued down. That’s okay because some creases in the neoprene underlayment have been bugging me. No one else notices, but there are two big creases that I hoped would relax and come out of the fabric, but they haven’t. I’ve got another piece of neoprene that’s been on a roll, and so should be wrinkle-free.

Once we play some games where the player stations are down I may learn some more lessons. I’ve been waiting to start Frosthaven until the table was complete, so it may be time to pull it out and give the table a proper christening! That game has a ton of stuff to keep track of, and is actually the game I had in mind when I decided to add the player stations in the first place!

The new shipment of sapele came in last week so I stopped by the hardwood store and got 4 boards of 12’ long sapele! These can be cut into thirds, and each part glued to a partner to make a single 12” wide leaf. So 4 boards will get me 6 leaves total.

Each board is around 10” wide, and I only need each half of a leaf to be 6”, so that gives me some leeway to cut out any edges where the grain gets wavy (like the top edge of that board in front), as well as potentially angle a cut to get the grain nice and straight in the resulting board. Each final piece will be 6” x 42” and then glued to a partner. Here’s the completed profile of the leaves from Sketchup:

The original plan calls for a groove along the bottom and then a piece of c-channel steel to be run along the length to help them prevent sagging. But after thinking about it for a while, and checking with The Sagulator, I’m going to try without the steel to start and see how well they resist sagging. The Sagulator says there will be 0.001” of sag per foot across the length, assuming no load on them. I don’t know it takes into account the effect of gravity, however. If I set the load to 10 lbs. it says only 0.005” of sag per foot. The seasonal wood movement will probably have more of an affect than that!