Build Your Own Poker Table for Under $150

We’ve all caught the DIY bug this month, which is why we have sore thumbs and our sub-editor’s dad is in hospital following a freak accident with a circle-saw (get well soon Maurice). However, we have a beautiful poker table as the fruit of our efforts. We can now guarantee that, with the tiniest comprehension of rudimentary DIY and a handful of dollars, you will soon be the toast of your friends and the envy of your neighborhood. Follow these simple instructions and you can’t go wrong, but careful with those circle saws.

Decisions
First, decide what dimensions you’d like your table to be. We decided on 96”L x 42”W. This seems to be big enough to seat 11 people rather comfortably, and just the right size to replace our old boardroom table with this new feltier version.

Break Out the Manly Power Tools
Using the circle saw, rip the plywood to the appropriate width
and length. For us, this meant chopping 6” off one side and leaving
the length as is.

To create an oval shape, you’ll need to do a bit of math. Take the
width of the table and divide by two. Mark that distance from each
end of the table, in the very center lengthwise. These marks will be
the center radius for the arc on each end.

Get some string and a pencil. Sink a nail or screw part way into
the marks you’ve just made. Tie a string around the nail or screw,
and attach a pencil to the other end so that the pencil is taut at the
end of the plywood. Use this contraption as a large compass to
draw a semicircle on each end.

Figure 1
Then, cut along your arcs with a jigsaw. You should end up with a ‘rounded rectangle’ piece of plywood (figure 1).

Give it Wood
The 8’ 1”x2” you purchased will be attached to the bottom of the folding table to give a bit more width for you to screw the plywood into. In essence, you’ll be sandwiching the folding tabletop between the plywood and the 1”x2” so you can use a longer screw and not rely on the particleboard folding table to hold the plywood top on. Thus, you need to chop the 1”x2” into a few pieces that can be placed on the bottom of your folding table. Make sure the legs will fold up properly when the pieces are attached. We used five pieces, each about 16” long.

Lay the plywood on the ground, top down, and center the folding table on top of it. Lay in your freshly chopped 1”x2” pieces and attach them using one of the #8 wood screws (one inch long). Then, drill pilot holes for the screws you will use to attach the top to the folding table. We put two holes in each of our five 1”x2” pieces, for a total of 10 holes that go through the 1”x2”, through the folding table, and through the plywood.

Figure 2 is of the bottom of the final product, but you can clearly see the construction involved in the underbelly of your hand-carpentered beauty. Note the placement of the 1”x2” pieces.

Figure 2
Next, flip everything right side up and attach the top to the folding table with the two-inch long screws. Make sure you counter sink the screws a bit so the heads don’t stick up above the table surface.

Upholster the Mother
Sand the edges of the table to round them off slightly. You may need to sand down the top of the table a bit, too, particularly where you put screws in.

Spray a two-foot section of the tabletop with the adhesive spray. Then, unroll a section of the foam padding on top. Read the directions for your spray adhesive. Ours recommended that we spray both surfaces and let it sit a minute or two to get tacky before applying the foam to the table. We sprayed some of our interns as well, and then threw sawdust at them. We
don’t recommend you do this, unless you have small interns.

Apply foam in two-foot sections until you have the table covered. Trim the foam so that you have only a few inches peeking over the edges.

You may need to iron your felt/cloth. If so, refer to any instructions that came with it. Also, do not let your friends take pictures of you doing this. Even more importantly, do not let your/wife girlfriend see the pictures if they do.

Put your felt/casino cloth on the ground, face down, and flip the table over on top of it. From here, you simply pull the cloth as taut as possible and start stapling it to the underneath of the plywood. This is most certainly a two-person job. It’s important to get the cloth as tight as possible. We found that it was easier, at certain points, to flip the table right side up and staple from below. You may wish to spray the final product with some Scotchguard.

Attach the rail
The CasinoSupply.com pre-fab rail is pretty simple. It wraps around the table and your only job is to permanently attach it. CasinoSupply.com suggests using heavy-duty 3/4” staples for this job, but we didn’t have a staple gun that could handle staples that big. So, we decided to use #8 screws, each with a #8 finish washer and 3/8 flat washer attached, to attach the rail. We used quite a lot of these. We’re not sure if this method is better than the staples, but it worked pretty well.

The trickiest part of the rail is the joint where the two ends connect. We used rubber-specific cement to glue them together. There may be a better solution, but we couldn’t find one.

Courtesy of Jeff Croft at www.jeffcroft.com