Order of Operations

I’m hopefully getting my truck back this week, so I can actually pick up some wood! In the meantime I’ve been thinking about the order of operations for the table: what to build in what order. In most projects there’s generally a “best” order to build things in order to make assembly easier (or even possible, in some cases). Building the whole project in Sketchup really helps with this process because you can see how everything will actually fit. You can then show and hide various parts, which makes for a nice simulation of assembling the table in the real world.

I’ve been thinking about the “base” (the big, flat bottom layer of the table) and right now I’m planning on assembling it like so:

A main panel of plywood, 42” x 72”, with the corners cut out for legs to be inserted, and a slot cut along the entire perimeter that accepts a spline, and then a frame of sapele wrapped around, 6” wide:

The dozens of holes you see in the frame won’t actually be there yet: they will be drilled at the time I’m ready to start attaching the player trays and cupholders.

My local supplier does have sapele plywood, but the last time I got some it had an MDF core, which I don’t think will be ideal for this project. I’ll be using splines to attach the hardwood frame to this plywood core, and I’m afraid the MDF could break away too easily. So I may have to compromise and go with whatever plywood they have in stock that has an actual wood core. You’ll never see this panel (unless you look under the table) and the undersides of tables are usually pretty gnarly anyway.

If you’ve worked with plywood before then you know the instant it’s not laying flat it starts to bow. The only flat areas I have large enough to store this while being assembled are my table saw outfeed table, and the floor. Neither of these are going to work because I’m going to need the outfeed table to build and work on the rest of the table, and the floor would just plain suck. But, I found a really nice set of sawhorses that you can connect together with 2x4s to make a huge table, flat enough to support this all the way around the perimeter while it’s being assembled:

After those are in place I’ll work on the sides, in sapele:

These are 6” tall have a small 1/8” groove running along the center of the top edge that will serve as a place to prop up any game cards, and also a drip trap in case someone spills something on the top:

Those wide gaps at the bottom are for the drawers, and I’m going to make a big effort to get all of the grain to match across the entire front, so that once the drawers are closed it almost looks like one large board. To do this I’ll need to rip the board in half (cut it lengthwise down the middle), cut out the drawers, and then glue the remaining places back together. It seems like a lot of work, and the effort will be pretty much invisible once it’s done. But if you didn’t make the drawers match it would be very obvious and distracting.

Next will come the web frame out of poplar, which will hold the plywood under tension and keep it flat. Once this is in place I’m less worried about the sawhorse support and may build and attach the legs so that it’s self-supporting. This frame provides the pockets that the drawers will slide in and out of:

Up to this point, everything built above are all large pieces of wood that will be fairly easy to mill and join together. After this, things get much more detailed and will involve a bunch of joinery and engineering to fit and assemble. I’m still thinking about my strategy for these…more on that to come!