Painting

On my table tennis table I have painted the table by putting two coats of paint on as an under-coat.

Then a further 3 as an over coat.

Then, after carefully measuring, marking and masking, I put on the white lines.

Finally I just did some touching up
Then to finish off the table I went out and brought a net for playing table tennis

I got some hooks that screw into the wall and some rope. This is so that when we put it against the wall it doesn't fall over and break.

Time Update: 22+ hours

Sanding Bumps

The next step before doing the overcoat of paint was to sand out the bumps created by the screws and other things that were put up through the table.

First you had to find the bumps, it is easiest to do that by running over the table with a ruler then when the ruler doesn't touch the ground on one point and it does on another you know you're on a bump. Once you have found the bump then you sand it.

Once the bumps have been visibly sanded away, use the ruler test and that says the table is flat, repaint the spots you sanded

Time Update: 18+ hours

Solution!!!!

I consulted my family about my problem and a solution was given; to put fold down legs in the middle of the table. To do that I needed to make some legs. Each of the legs consisted of three pieces of wood, two hinges, nails and screws.

 They worked a charm (but not before a bit of tweaking). The next job was to paint the table. To start off I was just going to do the first undercoat of paint.

Time Update: 17+ hours

Stil Bending

After buying plates, bolts and wing-nuts to make the table fold no further than 180 degrees, I did all the necessary things like taking out the middle screws on the hinges (because there are only two holes in the plate), counter-sinking the hinges and other things. I then tried the table. The table is able to stand but still bends in the middle.

 To overcome this problem I clamped a long stick to the table like so.

This made the table straight but you cannot make the the table fold or be portable. Some thought will go into this and hopefully I can make it work.

Time update: 13+ hours

Let it fold

The next step on my project is to make my table fold, to do this I needed some hinges. Before that I had to clean off edges of the ply, I used a rasp to grate off the bits of wood that didn't overlay smoothly.

I sanded the edges to give them a smooth feel. Then to start the process of making it fold. I started off by using the circular saw to cut the piece of ply wood in half. Then I figured out the distance needed to evenly space four hinges, then I drilled some holes and screwed the hinges on.

 Then I decided that to finish the folding effect i would need to put folding legs on it. Knowing that making my own legs would be too hard I went out and brought some. After drilling holes and grinding down bolts I screwed on the legs.

 Then when everything was on we tried to turn it onto the legs and stand it up. But the hinges were made to bend beyond 180 degrees, so tomorrow I am going to go buy some plates to stop it from bending

Time Update: 11+ hours

Putting it together

The next step in making my table tennis table was to join my two pieces of plywood together. To do this I needed to do two things: glue the two pieces together, secondly I nailed the two pieces together so it wouldn't get gaps in-between the pieces of wood that would effect the bounce of the ball. First I got some nails and clipped them down to size so they wouldn't poke through the table, then I drew a grid on the wood so the nails would be evenly spaced (the grid was made of 150mm x 150mm squares).

Next I glued the boards together and quickly nailed the spots where the grid lines met. It had to be done quickly so the air pockets don't form.

The nails I used were very small so I used a hair comb to hold the nail in place and then I hit it into place.

Time Update : 6+ hours

Working Starts

Today I decided to see how the ply-wood would work as a table tennis table. After setting up the ply-wood to sit on a chair, a workhorse and pieces of wood we tried it out by playing table tennis on it.

After trying different layer formations, I found that it was best to place a 6mm on top of a 4mm piece of ply to use as the table part. Next I tested the table to see how the ball bounced on the table. The standard test is to drop the ball from 30 centimetres and hope it gets to 23cm. Our ball reached about 21-23cm
  
I packed up the wood after finishing testing.

Time update: 4 hours