How to Build a Ping Pong Table | Craftsman

John Volpe shows you how to build a convertible ping pong table. It's the ideal kids table for your child's room or playroom, and can be folded up when they're not playing table tennis. It's the perfect woodworking project that will keep your kids happy for years to come! Join Craftsman Club to get the latest projects and exclusive deals: http://bit.ly/1MYp03B

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This Craftsman video is about how to build a ping pong table.

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Closed Caption:

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Hi.
My name is John Volpe.
Today we're going to be
building a kids' table
that folds out and converts into
a mini table tennis for kids.
The door is set up on four sawhorses.
So we've got the straightedge set up.
What I've done is I've scored a line
at 36 and 1/4 inches that gives us
a quarter inch extra space
there for the final cut, which
is going to be at 36 inches.
Set the depth of cut
on the circular saw.
The key is running the blade as
straight as possible against the edge.
So you're going to be putting
a little bit of pressure
to make sure that it
hugs the guide block.
As you can see, we've
got a nice, clean cut.
The tape seems to have worked.
And let's look at the actual top
of the door, which, in this case,
is unfinished.
We've got a beautiful clean cut.
We're going to clean up the
inside of the door, which
has that honeycomb cardboard
support system inside.
Pretty easy.
And in fact, all you need to do
is with your thumb just press down
and it just kind of tears away.
Take a nice, sharp
chisel and actually just
pare away some of the residual
glue from the cardboard
so we get a nice clean fit to fit
nice and snugly into the door.
That's a nice, perfect fit.
We're just going to mark where
we need to cross-cut it so
that it fits inside the entire hollow.
We're going to put some glue on here
and then insert it and clamp it up.
So we're ready to insert this.

Get it in there.
Fits pretty good.
We start at the ends first.
Make sure everything's going well.
And then every couple of inches
I like to put some clamps in.
Again, it ensures that there's
no bowing in the middle.
And the next step here is
to put the edgebanding on.
I'm using some hard maple.
It's a quarter inch thick.
And I cut it a little bit
longer than the actual door.
We'll cut that down to
size after it's glued up.
And I've also cut it a
little bit wider than I need.
And we'll use a router
with a flush trim that
will ride against the edge of the door.
And it'll trim this real
nice and flush to the door.
And it'll look real nice.
So what I like to do when I get towards
the end of the door in terms of flush
trimming the edge banding
is I like to make the corner
and like to go around
the corner just halfway.
On the opposite side,
I will take the router,
and as I'm running it
along the door, I'll
make another sweep across the edge.
And we'll get the full side
flush to the bottom of the door.
The next phase is to
glue up the leg stock.
I want to make sure that I get
as little squeeze out of glue
on the inside of this leg as possible.
First of all, I'm going to
lay some glue on this strip.
And then you go to the opposite
end, clamp that in place.
And what we're going to do
is we've got our two pieces.
One is cut at about 22 and 1/2 inches.
The other one's just left long.
What we're going to do is glue
these two pieces together like that.
And that'll make one leg for us.
And then, again, just
lay out your clamps.
And periodically you just
want to go back and make
sure everything is still in alignment.
This is just a cutoff.
It's a nice, straight piece
of cutoff maple that I use.
And I run it on the inside
of where the glue is.
And I try to hug the edge where the glue
is and just push out any squeeze-out
that there might be in there.
The next step is to fit the leg
extension into the center of the leg.
We went back and forth
to the table saw and just
trimmed off little slivers until
I had an absolutely nice fit where
the leg extension goes all
the way through the leg.
The first hole that we're going
to drill is through the leg
and through the center
of the center leg.
I've chucked a drill bit
and marked it so that we
don't go all the way through the leg.
It bottoms out where the tape starts.
I'm going to leave the
tapers uncut at this stage
so that we have a nice, flat
register on the leg stock
so that we can get a nice straight cut
when we go to make our biscuit cuts.
We'll use the quarter inch spacers since
the stretcher is going to be a quarter
inch inset from the edge of the leg.
These spacers will come
in real handy when we go
to make the slots into the H-stretcher.

We don't need the spacers.
We'll just use the
tabletop as our guide.
So we're making tapers on
four sides of six legs.
So that's 24 taper cuts squared off.
Take my pencil, draw my line.
And then what I like to do is I like
to connect the dots on the bottom side.
I've already made a taper cut on this.
So as a reference guide
to make sure that I
have enough material on
the bottom of the leg
so that I don't go overboard
and cut in too deeply--
we need the support for the
bottom of the legs, of course.
So we're ready to get
started on making those cuts.
We've gone ahead and made a series of
curved cuts with the regular handsaw
here all the way-- not quite
to the completion line.
Basically used our chisel here
to trim off as much of the waste
stock as possible.
We'll leave some of
that to the hand planer
and start making a series of
passes and get down to this line.
Once we get the majority
of it trimmed off,
it's going to be nice, smooth cuts.

So we're getting really
close to the line here.
I'm just going to make a couple
more passes with a smooth-- a nice,
little low block plane here.
And we've got the pins inserted.
And we're just doing a dry fit to
make sure everything fits properly.
We're going to put some
glue in to the biscuit
slots on both ends of the stretcher
and the leg and then clamp it up.
The final step today is we're going
to be gluing on the guide blocks.
So we've taken a 1 inch by
3/4 inch piece of maple, glued
on another two inch guiding strip.
This will get glued and
screwed down on both sides.
It will hug the inner
table so that the subtable
can slide very nicely in and out.
And we'll also take this
pre-countersunk and -screwed stop block
for the subtable and glue
that in place to the subtable,
so that when it slides out,
it catches on the stretcher
and it stops the subtable
from drawing all the way out.

And when we slide out the table, we
should have a nice, smooth action.

Well, and that's all it takes.
We just demonstrated how
to build a mini kids' table
that folds out into
a kids' table tennis.
So I hope you enjoyed the series.
Thanks for watching.