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In late 2003, my father and I built a pool table. I’m so proud of it.

This is the finished project. This was taken with an early digital camera. The reds are exagerated…

Before I could start on the project I had to have a vauge idea on where to start. So, I drove up to Schmidt Billards in Columbia. I would link to that page, but it seems that Malware is being hosted on the site. This is a great little pool shop. They have nothing but great service.

This illustrates how a rail is built

I found this slate by way of Matt. He knew of a guy that had a whole stack of it piled up in the back yard. The guy was going to cut them down into stepping stones. What a waste that would be!!! I only paid $75 for this set of 3 slates.

This is the guts and the glory. This is the primary crossbeam. It carries the weight of the pool table. This crossbeam is composed of 10 thin layers of wood glued together. This keeps it from ever warping.

Here the subframe is complete. This will all have 1′ x 12′ solid oak wrapping it. In an earthquake, I would fully expect this frame to protect me from any thing in the house.

Here are the legs before being wrapped in oak.

Here, I begin to wrap the subframe in oak.

Now I’m done with applying the oak to the subframe.

This is right after I stained the frame and before I sealed the wood.

A close up of the wrapped oak.

Another look at the wrapped oak.

The back of your slate should have boards around the edges.  My slate was purchased from a guy that was storing it outside.  So, the backing boards were rotted.  We used 1″ x4″ poplar wood for our backing.  I do not recall what kind of glue we used, as it was some time ago that we built this table.

The 2 2″ x 4″s on the bottom were added so me and my dad could safely rotate the table.  At this point, it is quite heavy.

When you set the slate on the table, you do not want to have to set it directly on the top of the cabinet.  You want a buffer there.  When you preeminently attach the slate to the cabinet, you will screw into this area.  You don’t want to put screws in your beautiful oak.  So, we added 1″ x 6″ poplar for this buffer area.

After that, we built the rails.  I’m afraid that at this point in the project, I failed to take photos as frequently as I should have.  The rails were quite a trick.  Next time I have the table apart to put on new felt, I will take good pictures that show the construction of the rails.

He, we are fitting the rails to the table.

Once we felt we had them fitting properly, we went ahead and stained and sealed them.  At this point in the project, I am gitty every time I look at it.  Dreaming of the first time I get to break open a rack…

Here it is after final assembly.  This day ranked in my top 3 proudest moments so far in life.  I had talked about building one of these since I was a little kid.

Cheers,
Jonathan