Looks like you’re new to the V1 community forums, so a hearty welcome! (@vicious1 - weird that the forum didn’t flag a new member for me in this case…)
There’s lots of ways other community members have approached this, you’ll see those as you search through the forums. Hopefully others will jump in here to show you their builds.
Completely agreed. I’ve fiddled around with folding/deployable/flippable.
I’m leaning towards easily removable just as Ryan notes above.
My next build hopefully will be in a travel case to take a LR to maker events.
I don’t think that’s true. X and Y are completely fine, z surface will change if you move your table but x and y will not. I do it all the time. It stays well under what I can measure.
I just tried the search for folding table, that will get you a bunch of ideas. There were a few that got raised up to the ceiling but I don’t think we had a cool name for them so I can’t find them with search.
This is awesome! I’d actually stumbled across your video when I started looking into this and it gave me hope that it could be done.
Looking closer at your build, I see that your table structure is made out of 2x4s, which I think would be necessary given the weight (compared to MDF supports). Did you use a jointer or need to do anything to ensure you had a flat surface for the tabletop? I made a jig on my table saw, but I don’t know If I could get them all perfectly even.
I’ve been reading through some of your posts, and had some questions. How did you affix your 3/8” MDF spoilboard to the plywood top? And seeing what you went through surfacing the plywood would you still use it or do you think there’s another material like OSB or MDF that would save a step or is the plywood necessary so you have something to screw into? Is there anything else you’d do differently if you were starting from scratch?
I’m not sure if this guy is here as well, but I was thinking of trying a mix between what you did and what he did for the X-carve. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrEnLvOIi1I
I poured a concrete pad this weekend for a toolshed that will let me clear out the space to start this, so I’m making progress!
Mostly I used the 2x4 frame because it was fast, relatively cheap, and it was something that I could make with the tools at hand (circular saw, cordless drill, table saw, tape measure). The 3/4 ply is fairly heavy, but I think that a well designed MDF frame could handle the weight.
No, I just eyeballed the 2x4’s for relative straightness, and screwed everything together. The resukt was less than flat (over 4mm difference between high and low spots).
I used composite brad nails. I tried them using a standard brad nailer, and the results were less than perfect (about 75% of them shattered on installation), but I managed to have enough of them survive to hold the spoilboard in place. If you were willing to shell out a bit more than a hundred dollars for the proper nailer, it would probably work a lot better.
I like having the plywood base for screwing into, but others seem to get away with just MDF. Personal choice, I guess. As far as saving a step, with the 2x4 frame as uneven as it is, I think that surfacing the plywood is probably easier and less toxic than surfacing over 4mm of MDF, and I like having an undisturbed thin MDF spoil board on top of the surfaced plywood.
Starting from scratch, without an existing table, I’m reasonably content with the path I took. Now that I actually have a table to work from, I am thinking of using that table to build an MDF (1/2" or 5/8" ribs) torsion box of the same size, but with a thin (1/8") sheet of MDF on the bottom, a moderate (1/2")sheet of plywood on top as a base to screw into, and then another 1/8" sheet of MDF as a spoil board. That would sit on top of the tilt-away base
But the existing table is working fine, so I may not go that route for a while yet.