Folks:
The wheels of progress grind slow but fine, pushing construction ever forward, or some florid Victorian remark or other. I am now proud owner of a legless table, built of 1 x 4 L-girder grids, and topped with 1/2" CDX plywood.
The table is in four sections, two of them 2x4, one 2x3, and one
2x5, in order to push one joint out from under a planned area with lots of switchwork. Sections are fastened together with carriage bolts, with washers.Good points so far:
-The grids are very rigid, with glue-laminated L-girders, corner blocks at some locations, Liquid Nails and screws at butt joints (I used Elmer's glue one one grid), and of course that plywood.
-The grid assembly is even fairly rigid and mostly in alignment. I placed the bolts in staggered pairs, spaced 1" crosswise,
3" lengthwise, because previous attempts at sectional bench- work with a single row of bolts were pretty floppy. I have to wonder how Linn Westcott and others solved this problem in sectional layout plans held together with carriage bolts.-For once I managed to get the table mostly square. We are trying for some quality control this time, and "measuring", and "working by the square rule", and "not drilling holes to fit".
Bad points so far:
-I have possibly the heaviest semi-portable model railroad in modern times. This may not be entirely disadvantageous. Light and strong is good, but what happens when somebody bumps into it? Besides, I may want to make a sand table out of the layout some day, or store bagged cement on top. In all seriousness, though, it's a bit much. Perhaps I should have used plain 1 x 3. At any rate, I can still handle the sections easily by myself, and I plan to use cookie-cutter methods later on, which should cut down weight. I think, though, that I might want to avoid making mountains from cement and hardware cloth on this one.
-My girder sides were less straight and square than they should have been, especially on the section I made first. Whoops. I had to add washers here and there, which kept the assembly nice and square. I also had to add 1/4" washer stacks between the ends of two units, so now I have the San Andreas Fault. I'm not sure how that happened. I may disassemble the table, plane down some of the winding boards, and add a strip of something to fill the fault line.
-The sections are not in perfect alignment, and are only held by friction, since the bolts have a lot of play. I may drill for some dowel pins, after I get everything lined up right.
So that is where the project is now. I'm going to get the table up on its feet before straightening out the misaligned sections, I think. I have the legs built already. I'm sure there are those who would throw up their hands in horror at the massive construction I am calling a portable layout, but I'll plug away. There are few educations better than the carrying out of a bad idea to its logical conclusion, right?
Cordially yours: Gerard P. President, a legless table.