Snack Table design

After the hiatus I was itching to do something but my kitchen cabinet design work isn’t finished yet, so I went looking to scratch a different itch in my family room.

In one corner of the family room is a small table — a “Dave” from Ikea — that gets used mostly when someone brings their laptop into the family room or when we have friends over as a place to set drinks or snacks.  But the Dave is a pretty crappy table — it’s wobbly and knocks over easily because it’s designed with a single strut for a support between the top and a base that’s sort of like an office chair base.  I hate it.

I decided I wanted to make a couple of new snack tables.  For inspiration I Googled “snack table” and got a lot of images to look at.  These two were the most interesting:

The one on the left is identical to a snack table Julie already has.  That design has a lot of good things going for it.  The flat base and rigid support make it very stable, and the magazine rack is actually handy as well.  The base is low, so it slides right under the couch either from the front or the side.  Julie’s has held up well and is well-made for a pre-fab assemble-at-home piece.  The other interesting one, on the right, is designed to fold up and store away when not needed.  I’m not actually interested in the folding aspect because the fold-out support looks as if it would make it hard to slide the table up into the couch.  But I like the width of the top.  It would fit a laptop, or it’s wide enough to place between two people and give both room for a snack and a tablet/magazine/dice tray (we still play D&D the old-fashioned way, by actually sitting in a room together and rolling dice).

Also, given my geeky bent, these tables need to be versatile.  They need to work equally well as a coffee table, as a small desk, or as an end table. Typing while sitting on the couch is not the same as typing while sitting in a chair.  Adjustable height, therefore, is a must-have feature.  So I spent some time getting reacquainted with SketchUp and came up with my design:

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The table top is wide enough for a laptop, mouse, and drink.  The base is likewise wide to make sure everything is stable, but also flat and low enough to slide in close when needed.  I kept the magazine rack from Julie’s but moved it to the side facing the user.  And the height is adjustable, thanks to a sliding back support that fits into the fixed support.  It slides on loose tongue-and-groove joints.  To lock in a given height, a piece of T-track on the inside face of the sliding part will receive a standard carriage bolt inserted through a hole in the fixed part.  A black threaded knob will cinch the bolt tight into the track to lock the height where it’s needed.  At its lowest position the top will sit 21 inches off the floor, which is about knee height to someone on the couch.  It should be able to adjust as high as 34 inches, which ought to be high enough for any of its intended uses.

 

Choosing Stock

The furnishings in my family room are varied in color and style, so pretty much anything would work in there (or at least wouldn’t look out of place).  I was planning to use plywood for the supports, bottom, and laminate-covered top and edge them with solid stock, so my readily-available plywood choices narrowed it down to red oak or birch/maple.  I’d done a lot with maple this past year and nothing with oak, so I figured I’d pick up some red oak plywood and solid stock for a change.

When I got to Woodcraft, though, they were a bit short on red oak unless I wanted to resaw 8/4 to get the pieces I wanted.  I could have done that, but then I spotted some really nice quartersawn white oak a little further down the racks.  These boards were nice and wide, and being quartersawn had that nice ray pattern on them.  A top glued up from those would be way nicer-looking than the laminate-covered plywood top I had originally conceived.  I grabbed 22 board-feet and headed back to the shop to prep it.

 

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