A train set table for my son

[bobtskutter]

Hello FOG, this is my first build log.  I'm not very good at remembering to take pictures so there might be a few steps missing, but you're all much better than me so I'm sure you can figure things out   It's also my second time at trying to post this because all the photos were too big.

My son wants a table for this model railway.  So I've started to build an 8x4' table.  The table needs to fit up the stairs of a typical british house (small and narrow) and be "knock down" style so it can be stored in his room.  The table top will eventually be made of four 2x4' torsion boxes which rest on 2 tressels - I've not started the table top yet.

I wanted the tressels to look a bit like this (which is actually from a Festool blog build).
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I roughed out the design in FreeCAD (I use linux as my daily PC) to get the dimensions.
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I decided to make the tressels out of thick plywood, I bought 3 sheets of 18mm Shuttering Plywood normally used for concrete forming from my local builders yard.  I also ordered a sheet of 12mm plywood for template making, that all came to £150!

Here's the material in my garage on my 8x4' cutting table with heavy objects on it to keep it flat.  I've been running the dehumidifier in the garage to keep the moisture under control, so weighing the sheets down seemed like a good idea.
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I made the template for the tressel legs from the CAD sketches then marked out all the sheets to cut 12 patterns for gluing into four legs.  I remembered to rotate one of the sheets to cut the plywood at 90degrees so that the individual plywood layers were still at 90degrees to each other at the glue surfaces.  I left some extra material at the bottom of the legs to give me something to support the guide rail on when I cut the bevel at the foot of the leg.  (Is it called a foot?)  The blank sections were cut out using a Carvex.
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I glued all the sheets together using Everbuild 502 glue and a vacuum bag press.  The bag is a king size matress bag bought from the internet for about £30, my trusty Dyson vacuum sucked all the air out.  After 24hrs I had four tressel legs, and lots of cleaning up to do!
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One of the freshly glued up sections had a large void in it, so I filled it with Epoxy - that's what you're supposed to do isn't it?  The epoxy is the cheap stuff from Lidl and worked really well.
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Once I knew the "template then glue then vacuum press" process worked I started work on the central spine.  I used the already made leg pieces to help me mark out a template for slotting the roughy 54mm plywood sheets together.  Then used a pattern router bit to cut the template.  I forgot to take a photo of the fininshed "spine template" so had to take it after I'd started another project.
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It fits!
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More to follow

regards
bob

 

[bobtskutter]

Continuing...

After some fool decided to bang brad nails into the pieces, I had to use a metal detector to look for the nails. https://www.festoolownersgroup.com/...ute-through-brad-nails-whats-going-to-happen/
Thankfully none of the nails were in the cut paths - phew!
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I tacked the templates to the 54mm thick blanks with more brad nails then trimmed around the template.  I used my trusty "Wilco Quality" chisles to remove the excess materal before using the Carvex and a 145mm long Festool blade to remove the rest.  I then used a 60mm template bit to clean up all the pieces to give me 4 legs and 2 spines, plus a vast pile of saw dust.  I shouldn't have removed the waste with the chisles, the Carves did a good job - could have saved a few minutes work.
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I broke out the TS75 to cut the miter on the foot of the leg.  I set the angle of the blade to what the CAD sketches said I need, then crept up on the required angle with several more cuts.  My iGaging angle cube fits on the back of the blade, just remember to remove it before starting the saw.  Turned out to be 22.5degrees, what a cracking bit of luck - see later on!
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The top of the legs were marked out using a craft knife blade and sharp pencil, then the tops were trimmed with the TS75 to 22.5degrees.  I usd my "blue sticks of truth" to see if everything lined up.  There's a 1mm gap between the spine and the top of the legs, that will stop the table top from rocking about when it's installed.  Speaking of the table top, it will be held in place by dominos acting as locating pins, so out came the DF500 - that 22.5degree stop on the machine sure was usefull.
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The finished piece!  It's a good weight, not too heavy, and definatly doesn't flex.  The guys at work think I miss read the brief and made a table to put a train on.  Over engineering things always has been one of my strong points
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The offcuts went through the shredder and then on the garden.
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Now to start on the torsion boxes....

Regards
Bob

 

[Crazyraceguy]

I like the idea of the notches to hold a guide rail.

I think your work colleagues are correct, those will hold up the entire house.

I use a similar, scaled way down, version at work. We developed this design may years ago at work as a knock-down for transport. The installers all have them in their vans and the rest of us use them in the shop every day. Some have taller top rails to match existing tables.
They are incredibly strong. Four of them will support an entire bunk of 3/4" MDF
They are a single layer of 3/4 Ply and you can get 3 complete units per 4x8 sheet.

 

[Jeff Zanin]

Those trestles look extremely strong and very nicely made.