Converting an octagon to a round w/rail (1 Viewer)

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Back in 2010 a friend of mine helped me convert my 8 player octagon into a round cushioned rail table. I figured I'd re-post the info and pictures here in case it would be of interest to anyone.

Here's the original table I purchased back in 1994 (or 1995?) from a family based company in the midwest that I can't recall the name of unfortunately. It has a nice double sided dining top as well. It's 60" wide on center, and 64" wide corner to corner.


Late August 2009 I ordered new felt, padding, vinyl and rail foam for my friend and I to take on the new project. This after my friend kept complaining about the lack of rail for 2 years. Mind you, this table is in my dining room so any rail created would have to be removable, portable and still also secure when attached.

Here's a pic of the table after I changed the felt Fall of 2009. A couple things of note regarding the original felt and padding: the felt was standard billiard felt and pilled quite a bit over the years. When I removed it, the "padding" was nothing more than a transparent sheet of that foam/papery stuff that receivers and other electronics are typically wrapped with! Velora and suited speed cloth was obviously a huge improvement. And while I was at it I had JUST enough to pad and re-felt the insert trays as well.


The new final result became a 66" round table with a huge 9" rail.
 
The 9" rail was out of necessity due to the dimensions of the playing surface and the outer octagon corners. The rail is comprised of two separate semi-circles with no seams, but the outer 4 corners were a major PITA and not 100% perfect, but decent enough.

We were able to used one 4x8 sheet of birch, one sheet of foam and 2-3 yards of vinyl.

Our initial thoughts were to fill the trays, making 8 padded plugs. But that would have been an awful amount of cuts, plus also still having the problem of not being able to handle a 9th and/or 10th player too comfortably. (Also a round table makes it much easier for 6 players to spread out more vs "fixed" spots of an octagon). So we decided round was the way to go. We first made cardboard cutouts to visualize it and make sure we could indeed get both sides out of one 4x8 sheet.


Then we thought and over thought about how to attach it to the table. Ultimately we decided on using the existing cupholder spaces. The existing cup holders pull out from the wood easily, and the depth is about 2.5". We used a 2 3/4" hole cutter and made 24 circles from the left over plywood. 1/4" t nuts went on both sides of 8 circles, and then we glued and screwed another circle on either side to make 8 2.25" "feet" that would fit into the cup holder holes.


From there, I placed the 8 feet into the holes, then marked and drilled holes through the underside of the table base. Then the two rail pieces were placed on the table and held in place by 4 people while I marked the holes from underneath the table into the bottom of the rail wood. Then I attached the feet to the rails, countersinking the 1.5" bolts and it was time to finish it off with foam and vinyl.


We either didn't use enough 3M glue or it was too old, as it didn't stick the foam well to the wood. We also didn't seem to cut enough overlap for both the outside and inside edges, but it's still okay.

We also had to cut the vinyl in semi-circles in order to use the minimal 2-3 yards I had ordered. The four outside edges were tough to do and not perfect, but the rest came out okay.


Underneath, there are 2" hex bolts attached the rail pieces to the table base. It's pretty solid. And completely removable, so I can still use the octagon, and more importantly (to some) I can still have the wood dining top table in the dining room. Voila!

 
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Very nice, how does that rail feel while your playing?
It's probably not bad, I just think about more arm touching the rail may be a bit uncomfortable for those hoe sweat easy..
 
Thanks. It feels pretty comfy. Not as awkward as it may look. And the trade off when we have 6 or 9+ players is worth it. Can't remember what it's like playing while wearing short sleeves though.
 

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