[ Saw whirring ] ♪♪ Welcome back to "The Woodsmith Shop."

On today's episode, we're giving game night an upgrade and building this poker table.

Of course, you can use it for practically any game, but this one is designed for poker.

We have a lot going on here.

Now, the original plans started with a purchased base and leg set, but Logan thought that that was way too easy.

So he's going to show you how to make your own.

We'll cut out the legs from solid wood glued up pieces, and then he's going to glue up a center column and then head over to the lathe and turn a custom look on this one.

Then it's my turn for the top of the table where we start off with some basic MDF panels, turn them into an octagon shape, and then start building on the layers.

Whether it's the cup holders and the chip trays, the molding and some veneered face pieces, there's a lot going on in this project, and a lot of woodworking techniques to get your hands on and learn to master.

If you're ready to build along with us, the plans are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

So let's get over to Logan and start on the base.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

Additional funding provided by... Titebond Wood Glue -- the pro's advantage.

And by... ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ So our poker table build starts with the base.

We're going to create this pedestal and some legs.

This pedestal is going to need glued up, so I'm going to get that going first.

Now you can see here we have one that we've purchased online, but I think this looks like a really fun turning project.

So that's what we're going to do.

So if you look at the construction of this guy, you can see that it's basically a bunch of staves.

And this is a coopered column, makes an octagon.

So what we're going to do is we're to start here at the table saw, and I've already cut some of my blanks, and I cut these a little bit thicker.

That will allow me to turn a little bit bigger details in this when we get to the lathe.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to use one of these digital angle gauges to set the angle of the blade because it has to be an accurate 22.5 degree bevel on each side for this to come together nicely.

So we'll go ahead and tilt the saw.

Zero this out.

We will tilt the blade until it reads 22.5.

Now clamping up an octagon can be a little tricky, but we can use painter's tape as a hinge for all these staves.

What I've done here is I've laid out all the staves.

I have one final one to put in place.

And then we just line up both ends and make sure that that joint where those corners meet looks good.

So we'll apply a line of painter's tape.

And rub that down.

And then what I'm going to do is I'm also going to add a couple of strips lengthwise just as a little bit of insurance.

Painter's tape is a good way to really hold these together and you don't want to be stingy on it.

To create a wide stable base for our pedestal and our poker table, we need to make a set of legs.

To make those, I've went ahead and printed off the pattern, and I've attached it to this piece of MDF hard board.

Then I went ahead and shaped it, so this is nice and smooth, and this is exactly the shape I want my finished legs to be.

So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to use this to trace out on my stock the shape of the leg, and then we'll cut it out with the band saw.

After we're done with cutting out all the legs, we'll head over to the router table and flush trim them to shape.

Now, with our legs all cut to shape, we can go ahead and flush trim them.

And I'm going to use the pattern to do that.

And we'll press it firmly down.

We really want that to hold as we're routing.

So now what we're going to do is use a pair of router bits to make this cut.

Because these legs are so thick, one bit usually isn't going to cover it.

So I'm going to use this pattern bit with a bearing on its shank, and we'll first flush trim it with that pattern down and the bearing riding against that.

Then for a second pass, we'll go and flip that out for a taller flush trim bit, and then we'll reference off of that already flushed up surface.

So once the staves are dry, we're ready to turn whatever details on this pedestal that we want.

But before we do that, we need a way to hold this.

Because this is staved, it's an open center, so I can't really add a face plate to the end.

I can with plywood ends.

So what I've done is I've cut these plywood ends that are square exactly the same size as the pedestal is.

That way I can cross the corners, and that gives me a good center location.

And then I simply screwed these to the end.

Now what I'm doing first before I even start touching this pedestal is knocking off these corners.

Because those corners are flying around, I don't want to accidentally catch my elbow on them, so I'm just going to knock them off and round them over.

Okay, now those corners are removed.

So now I can concentrate on whatever details I want.

Now, I made this pedestal out of 2-inch thick material, so I have a lot of room to play with here, so I can add a lot of detail if I want.

I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to concentrate in the center, and I think we're going to do kind of a big bead and maybe a little lamb's tongue coming out of it.

It'll be simple, but it'll be elegant.

So what I'm going to do is I'm first going to define the ends with a parting tool.

And I want to do that because I don't want to touch these flats or these corners with any of my turning tools.

I want to leave those nice and square.

I only want the turned area to be in that center, so we'll give ourself a good definition, and we'll start rolling that big bead.

All right, well, a little bit of a wardrobe change is keeping the shavings out of my shirt, and spindle roughing gouge really brings this down nice and smooth.

So we have kind of a nice little transition here between the octagon top and bottom and where we're going to put our big bead.

But we might dress that up a little bit more.

But right now, what I can do is I can decide where I want this big bead to go.

So to do this, what I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of eyeball the center, and then I'm going to give myself a couple of marks where I want the outside of this to drop down.

So then what I'm going to start doing is start working those corners down, and I'll come in with a parting tool to give myself a little bit of relief, and then I'll start rolling those in.

On the right hand side, I'll roll from the center to the right.

On the left hand side, I'll roll from the center to the left.

All right.

Now you can kind of see how I'm rounding this over.

And because this is staved, I don't have a ton of depth here to play with.

I still have 2 inches, but I think I'm getting a little thin there.

So I don't want to go any deeper.

But I think you kind of still get the idea of a ball sitting in the middle of this pedestal.

Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to create a lamb's tongue on the top of this.

On the bottom side, I kind of have this waterfall type cut coming off the bottom, and it looks really nice.

It looks like it's sitting down.

And up top, I put this little cove.

So the lamb's tongue detail is simply going to be a scoop with a round over.

So it's basically an ogee profile.

So I'm going to scoop the top section, and then about half way down, I'm going to roll it over.

And it's just a really nice traditional detail.

Once I have that cut, time for a little sanding.

Okay, so the first grit of sanding is done.

I have a couple more to go.

But then this thing is ready to drill some holes for the legs.

Now, of course, if you have a lathe and you want to glue up a pedestal like this, it offers you some design opportunities to kind of come up with your own fun design.

Or you can go ahead and order one online.

So now it's off to Phil to build the top.

All right, the playing surface for the top of our poker table is going to look as good as we can make it, but it's going to start off decidedly plain.

And the final shape is going to be an octagon.

Eight even sides.

I know how to do squares, but cutting an octagonal shape is going to take a little bit of applied geometry.

So here's how it works.

We have our square blank for the base layer of the poker table top.

What I've done is drawn corner to corner center lines across here, giving me a center point, kind of like a radius here.

And now what I'm going to do is I have a yardstick with a T-square head on it, and I'm going to line that up on the corner.

And then set the T-square head so that the end of the ruler is right on the crossing diagonal line.

Okay?

So now with this, we're going to start to lay out the corners for all eight sides.

So what I'll do is I'll align the T-square on one edge of my blank, draw a line here.

And do the same thing going in the opposite direction.

And now work my way around the top from each corner.

All right, you can kind of see our octagonal shape hiding in the square here.

Now, I don't want to start getting the saws out yet and cutting.

What I want to do is build up the thickness of this base layer with another inner ring.

And I'm going to use those ring pieces to ensure that all eight sides of our octagon are exactly the same.

Because if they're not, each one of the corners and pieces and layers that goes on next is going to require fine tuning.

That's going to be a lot of tedious work.

So let's get started on making some strips for the lower ring.

All right, our next order of business is to add that ring that goes around the top but helps to beef it up a little bit to give us more glue surface for the other layers and makes it a little bit stronger.

And we're also going to use this edging to determine the final size of our top.

It's a little back and forth here, so kind of bear with me.

So what I did is I used a square to get those layout lines from my corners to wrap down over the edges.

Then I took blanks that are ripped to final width, and then I mitered a 22.5 degree angle on one end of those.

You can line up that corner with your layout line and then mark the opposite end on one of them and cut that to its final length.

Now I'm going to use this one as the master.

Back over at the table saw, I'll set up an angled miter gauge with a stop block and cut the remaining strips to their final length.

Then we'll come back here and attach it and use that to create the final shape for our sub top.

All right, there's really two things that you're concerned with as we make these filler strips on the bottom side here.

One is the angle.

We want to make sure that when we have everything put together, we have a perfect octagon, and along with that, each one of these strips needs to be the exact same length.

Now, we did that at the table saw, and having a couple of test pieces in there is really going to help you get everything set up.

Now what we want to do in order to help shape our sub top is to attach these together.

So what I'm going to do... ...is run some glue on the bottom side here.

And then I want to line it up so that the outside corner lines up and I have a nice tight seam against the side here, and then I'm just going to work my way around the outside.

I'll clamp this in place.

And then I'm going to screw it down so that we don't have to wait for the glue to dry.

Now that we have that inner ring glued on, we're still going to add some structure here that's mostly unseen, but we're getting to the parts that are going to be pretty.

What we have now to add are some larger segments of MDF that get glued up into a ring, but that overhang the sides of the table.

And this is going to support like the chip trays and the cup holders and the outer section of our poker table once we get going here.

Now, cutting these is about the same as our inner pieces that we did before, just using a miter gauge at the table saw.

However, since they overhang the edge and we want this to be a smooth, continuous ring around the side, what I want to do is join each of these pieces together with something more than just glue.

So we're going to head over to the router table and tackle that.

The porous end grain surface of MDF makes a poor glue joint.

So what I've done is installed a slot cutting bit in the router table.

We're going to cut a groove on each end of all of these segments.

Then we'll glue a hard board spline between those.

That's going to bridge the gap from each segment to segment, and that'll keep them all aligned.

It's going to add glue surface, and it's going to strengthen the whole assembly.

So there's a lot going on here with just a narrow strip of hardboard.

All right, well, we've been here before.

We're going to attach the tray support pieces now going around the outside of the table, just like we did with the narrow strips before.

I'm going to clamp it in place with a little bit of glue, add some screws, and work our way around.

A couple of little wrinkles that are added here.

Each one of these segments, I drilled a pair of holes over at the drill press with a forstner bit and then ease the bottom portion of it.

Now, once the table is done, there's going to be some tray liners, and this will allow you to just be able to pop those out of there for cleaning or replacing them down the road.

So the other wrinkle that we're going to add is we have the spline slots here.

So I'm going to brush some glue on to the spline, fit it into place.

Then I can add the ring, clamp it down, drive the screws.

You know where this is going.

And repeat the process all the way around the side.

Up to now, we've been working in batches on the pieces that we're working on.

So we've had these segments of two different rings that we've attached to our sub top of the table.

Now when it comes to the edging, we want to take things a little bit slower and a little bit more patiently.

So I started at the table saw by ripping blanks for the edging all to width, and then from these long blanks, I could get the miter gauge out, same 22.5 degrees that we've been using so far, and kind of cut them to rough length to get to this point.

Now what I want to do is work my way one at a time, going all the way around, and here's one way to do it that I like, and that's to take one of my off cuts.

And I've clamped it in place right at one of the miter joints.

Now, the nice thing here is that we can work on it and check it with another piece just to see where we are.

And then I can use a micro adjuster here and tap it one way or the other until it's right in position.

What that does is give me a positive reference point for holding one end while I can mark and cut the other side to its final length.

If necessary, trim it off just a little bit more over at the table saw.

Adding the oak edging means we can start dressing things up a little bit on our poker table.

I started with routing a Roman ogee profile on the top side of that edging.

Here, we have the table face up.

On the bottom side, I eased that transition with a simple roundover bit.

Next up is to line the inside of our chip trays that we're creating here with these thin edging strips.

So like before, I have a short spacer that I've clamped in place right on that miter joint so that I have a place to reference my edging on.

And I can run a bead of glue on that.

Tuck that right into place.

Clamping this isn't going to be any fun, so I'm just going to use a few pin nails just to hold everything in place while the glue dries.

[ Nail gun fires ] On each corner of the poker table sits a cup holder for your favorite beverage.

And that's what we're going to be making next.

Now, these cup holders have a unique shape so that they can wrap around the octagonal playing surface here.

So we're going to make those in two separate parts.

All the work starts over at the table saw where we'll take a blank for each half.

We'll cut a miter on one end of the piece, then switch to a miter gauge set for 90 degrees and make another cut.

Then I use the rip fence to make a final cut to get it to its final shape.

Then we'll go over to the band saw and rough cut the circle for where the cup is going to sit in place.

Now, later on, we'll flush trim it, but the next thing that we want to do is glue these two halves together.

What we're going to do now is I've installed a half inch straight bit in the router table, and we're going to cut a pair of dados along each side here that will hold the two risers that lift the cup holder up to their appropriate place.

So now that these are taken care of, we can work on the next layer, and that layer is a facing strip that connects the dots from each of the cup holders.

I started on these earlier with some oak blanks that I glued mahogany veneer to.

I thought the contrast between some straight grained mahogany and the color and grain of the oak would play really well together.

Once that was done, trimmed that all up with a flush trim bit at the router table and then mitered them to length.

It's that same 22.5 that's been our good friend this whole episode.

Now what we want to do is add some detail to set off the veneer from the oak a little bit better.

And for that, it's back over to the router table.

All right, here at the router table, I've installed a bowl and tray bit.

It has rounded edges on it that's going to give us a nice cove profile.

And I've set it up to remove about an inch from each end of our facing pieces.

So you get to see some of the oak in there and have a nice curved profile.

After I take care of all the ends, I'm going to reposition the fence and then trim away the edges on the top and bottom to create kind of a veneered field that will really highlight well and look great on our poker table.

I've been working my way around the poker table, attaching the last little bits of the jewelry that we need to apply here.

And that's a cap molding that kind of finishes off the facing pieces that we made earlier.

Now, making this molding is a lot like what we did for that edging strip that we applied a while back.

I started with wide blanks over at the router table.

Actually set up two router tables to take care of the ogee and then the round over profile.

Then I can rip the strips to width over at the table saw.

One last little round over on the back side just eases that transition into the chip tray.

Then it's back to the miter saw or the table saw to miter all the pieces and get them to fit all the way around.

You want to take your time gluing everything up here just to make sure that all the joints stay nice and tight.

And as you can see, it uses up quite a few clamps.

So what we can do now is finish off this poker table by attaching it to the base that Logan made earlier and then adding the liners for the chip trays and the main playing surface.

With the construction wrapped up on the poker table, the last thing to take care of is the playing surface.

Now this starts off as an MDF octagon, just like we started this whole project off with for the top.

Now we just need to wrap it in some felt, and the way we did that is to apply some spray adhesive both to the top and to the backside of the felt.

And you just lower the top with some help on to the felt and then crease it down.

And then we wrapped it around the backside, folded it up, and you can just drop it right in place.

We did the same thing for the chip tray liners.

These are just pieces of hard board that are designed to fit the openings here, put some felt on the top side, and then they can drop in place.

Now, the plans go through the whole steps of connecting the top to the base.

You'll also find in the plans an auxiliary top that's a solid, smooth surface to be able to transform this into a table that hides its gaming habit.

You can find the plans at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

That's also the place to find an accessory project, a video where I walk through the process of making a chip tray and box that goes along with this poker table.

So I hope you enjoyed building this poker table along with us, and we'll see you again right here in the Woodsmith Shop.

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Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith guild edition, with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of the Woodsmith guild edition and a free Woodsmith book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD, or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

Additional funding provided by... Titebond Wood Glue -- the pro's advantage.

And by... ♪♪ ♪♪