Building a home Poker Table

[gmunny]

Hey Waccii,
Table looks sweet! Can you tell me what the dimensions are? Also, how did you make the chip holders? Thanks.
G$

[ncskiier]

Just got my velveteen from the ebay seller. Went with it after trying it at a friends game. Delivered at 4pm, cards in the air at 6. It's great. Looks good, cards slide good, and best of all it's beer resistant. I tried it on some scrap. Two thumbs up.

[waciii]

I added a much better picture of the cloth to Gallery of pictures: Better Poker Cloth Picture


Larry,

Yes it has. I don't have a regular game that plays on it so it's not like it's getting weekly use. But it has held up and probably would've have it it got more use. It's really a solid material that doesn't seem likely to ever "pill".


gmunny:

I started with a 4x4 piece of "Golden Virola" hardwood plywood from Home Depot and made that into an octagon. So the "field" is 48" edge-to-edge at all seats.

The "tray" at each seat location is 3" tall and roughly 5" or 5.5" across. So that gives the full table width as 58". The chip holders are 1" thick and are raised about 3/4" off the bottom of the tray. Drink Holders were about 2" thick and cutting the hole was the hardest part of the whole thing. Had to get access to a monster drill press to drive the hole saw through the Cherry.

Under the Cloth is two 1/2" thick layers of generic foam (I forget where I picked that up).

Trays are attached to the field with a Furniture Bolt that consists of the wide head brown bolt you see exposed and a Barrel Nut that in a hole drilled vertically through the field. Trays are additionally reinforced with Triangular blocking between each tray and the field as well as Diamond shaped blocked at the junction between adjacent trays and the field.

The pedestal and legs were bought pre-fab from a Furniture Restoration catalog and are also solid cherry.

The "Chip Trays" were fabricated on a table saw. You do this by experimenting with scrap to find the proper angle. The angle is for "fences" that you clamp to the table saw. With the fences in place at the proper angle, you can raise the blade to take out 1/32nd inch or so of material. By running the 1" thick "chip tray" blanks across the table saw blades at an angle, you can take out a very small amount of material on each pass. Then raise the blade and take out another small bit of material. If your angle is right, you eventually sweep out about 3/4" of groove that matches the width of your chips. This is a relatively straightforward method, but you do have to go slow. It helps to make a long chip tray blank (say 8 feet) and cut all the grooves and then cut the blank into 4" (or so) lengths to fit in the tray. Note that the blade kerf (the width of the table saw blade) causes a reasonably significant angle marks in the resultant chip grooves that have to be sanded out. You really ought to get access to a spindle sander for this.

Whole thing cost about 5 Franklins. About $200-$250 for the top (which is all I had for awhile ... I sunk an eye bolt underneath and hung it on the wall for storage during my batchelor days). Then later $250-$300 for the pedestal and 3-Toed Lion Paw legs.

[TenPercenter]

[ QUOTE ]
Just got my velveteen from the ebay seller. Went with it after trying it at a friends game. Delivered at 4pm, cards in the air at 6. It's great. Looks good, cards slide good, and best of all it's beer resistant. I tried it on some scrap. Two thumbs up.

[/ QUOTE ]

Can you link to your auction please? Or at least to that seller's auction list?

Ten

[ncskiier]

The seller is pokerchipdirect. Try this link to his ebay store http://search.stores.ebay.com/search...;fp=0&st=2

[RiverTheNuts]

I bought the same velveteen... at least on mine, the cloth around the sides is easily damaged, and the cards dont slide all that well across it, I think Im gonna have to try poker felt next table I build

Ill Join

[grayhawk]

I think I have figured out a good method. My son recently broke a cheap tape measure (pulled it out of the housing) so I an left with a 10 foot long piece of the aluminum tape. This is perfect for drawing the arcs. It even has the measurements right on it. This is similar to the yardstick method, but it is nice and thin to get the pencil through.

[kona]

Is this the same as speed cloth? I played at Auga Caliente and they had felt which sounds the same. Very sturdy and because of the pattern it helped the cards float and move smoothly. I think I will use this type if I ever build a table.

[waciii]

Kona:

Very hard for me to say if this is the same as speed cloth. It just might be. The description at http://www.casinosupply.com/ with the part about "canvas-like feel" sounds about right. However, the picture on their site doesn't show the texture that I would expect based on what I've got.

Again, I think I went through Gambler's General Store to get mine, but that was in the mid-90's.