I decided to go with the tongue and groove joint for the front panels. After a day, the magnets seemed to have moved a little, so I’m abandoning them for some more traditional joinery!

I needed to cut a groove into both the player station vertical support and the front panel itself, and then glue a “key” into groove on the panel, making it sort of a faux tenon that would then slide into the groove on the player station. I got my big vertical fence jig for the table saw and flipped it around to the other side to use with the router. The panels would go through vertically and the player station sides would go through laying horizontally:

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I ended up with a groove in each:

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I also needed to remove the magnets that I had now epoxied in place! Using a chisel, I cut around them and then glued in a patch:

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Then I cut and glued in the keys:

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Here’s the new and improved panel procedure:

To keep track of which panel goes where, I’m going to stamp them with letters, A-F (going counter-clockwise around the table, starting at the lower left corner). I got a cheap set from Amazon and stamped a letter on both top edges of the front panel:

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I’ll stamp a coresponding letter someone inconspicuous on the player station itself so they’re each to match up.

I put the second coat of finish on the front panels tonight. I’m only going to do two coats on these since they won’t be subject to the abuse of the rest of the table. I also did a quick wipe on/off on a couple of the cupholders and corners that looked a little duller than the other sections. I’m not sure if this is due to me finishing them at different times, sometimes weeks apart, or if I forgot the final coat of Feed ‘n’ Wax on couple of them, but I’ll probably wipe on/off another coat of the wax once it comes into the house to freshen everything up a bit. I also went through and stamped letters on the underside of the corners and cupholders.

Next up will be the drawers, for the second time!

I feel like the table is about 80% done and I’m very happy with it. The only things remaining are the drawers, table leaves, dice towers, and the actual play surface (thinking about microsuede or velvet over neoprene).

• Time spent so far: ~150 hours. That doesn’t include time planning in Sketchup, which was at least a couple of dozen more hours.

• Wood cost is $1,015 so far, and I still have to get boards for the table leaves. I didn’t include the cost of the two huge boards that were on the wood rack for years, as I have no memory what they cost at the time! But an additional $500 wouldn’t be too crazy of an estimate.

• Hardware (slides, cupholder inserts, hinges) costs are $675. This could have been much lower with cheap hinges from Amazon. But you can’t beat Brusso, but you definitely pay for the quality.

• I spent around $700 on various tools (track saw, fold down saw horses, pocket hole jig) and drill bits (90mm bit for the cupholders), but I’ll be using them on future projects, so I could probably amortize the cost of those.

Considering the table that I pulled my research photos from starts around $21,000 for the same size as mine, I’m coming out pretty far ahead!

Took a few beauty shots and a couple of videos:

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A walkaround:

And the finished player stations:

Finally, the chatoyance of this wood! Sapele never disappoints!

I jointed, planed and cut the drawer sides to rough size last night. Started with the big 8” x 12” pieces that I cut a couple of weeks ago when I got the new douglas fir board, then planed them down to about 2” thick and cut into strips just over 2 1/4” wide:

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They’re very close to quartersawn which is ideal for drawers (minimal wood movement).

I have eight pieces that have the lighter strip of sapwood along the top. I’m going to use those for the 4 of the drawers, the ones along the long sides of the table. I doubt anyone will notice, but I’ll know. 🤫

I rebuilt the drawers on Sunday. First I got the rough fit done (which was as far as I got the first time):

I still had plenty of time to add the bottoms! Traditional drawers will have a solid wood bottom and some tricks to make sure that as the wood expands/contracts it doesn’t crack. But, I avoided most of that by using some 1/2” MDF that I had lying around. The bottom of the drawer will be lined with same material as the place surface, so I didn’t need to worry about aesthetics, and the MDF will stay flat and smooth forever. Plus, I can glue the bottoms in place which will really make the drawers rock solid. Then I can work on shaving down each drawer for a good fit, hopefully preventing any racking.

I cut a groove in the four sides of the drawers:

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and then added a rabbet all the way around the bottom on the table saw:

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Perfect fit!

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For the drawers I decided to forego the sander and went to the workbench to plane them smooth:

Next I’ll drill the holes for the pins (similar to the ones that went on the player stations) and then they’re ready to be glued up.