First things first; give credit where it's due. Much of what I did here was based upon tables built (and documented on-line) by two other people, specifically
Pete's Poker Tables (Oak Octagon) and kempka.net.Secondly, I wish I had more pictures, but I didn't decide to write this until the end, so WYSIWYG. I'll be verbose to make up for the lack of pictures.
Thirdly, as of this writing, I haven't decided what to do about a base for the long term so I'm only going to talk about the "table" proper. Short term, I'll be temporarily mounted legs with locking hinges to the table.
OK, back to the story.
I'd bought one of those cheap folding octagons a while back, similar to this one:
Yeah, I knew it was cheap but I hadn't realized how cheap. The felt started wearing virtually immediately and a 48" octagon really doesn't work very well once you get above 6 players. Just not enough elbow room.
After looking around at the various plans out on the web and thinking about table size, I decided to built a 58" octagon which gives a full 24" per person/side.
Being my first woodworking project of significance in years and even more years when you restrict the discussion to "furniture", I decided to go with white pine. If I screwed up, I wouldn't have ruined/wasted multiple hundreds of dollars in wood and staining would yield a pretty nice result anyways.
A borrowed pickup truck and a trip to the lumber yard and, voila! 20' 1x8, 30' 1x4, and 2 sheets of 3/4" plywood at a cost of $155.
From the local craft/sewing store, 1 roll 72" x 90" cotton fleece and 2 cans 3M Super 77 spray adhesive for $20.
Then I found YourAutoTrim and got 2 yards of speed cloth for $30.
I feel obligated to comment on the cloth. First of all, as many sites discuss, plain craft felt will not work for a poker table. You can buy microsuede, poker felt, poker cloth, and a wide variety of other materials of varying quality that will work. I decided to go for speed cloth for durability.Also, with the 58" octagon, the playing surface ends up being 42" (give or take) from side to side meaning most fabrics at the local sewing/crafts store won't cut the mustard since they're only available in 36" wide bolts. Finding 54" wide speed cloth for $15/yd was a good deal.Extraneous Materials:
Some of these I had already, some I didn't and went out and bought. The grand total was $60. Obviously some things could be used or would be enough for multiple tables.
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The list below covers everything I used with one exception. I didn't have a table saw and I wasn't going to borrow or buy one for this. I ended up getting a co-worker to rip 10' of my 1x4 into 20' of 1x2 for the bull nose trim. I could have bought 1x2 from the get-go, but the prices were just silly.
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One comment on the clamps. I did splurge on one thing to aid in the clamping of the octagon ring. Bessey makes a miter clamping set that basically clamps onto each of the two pieces you're assembling then has a set of interchangeable inserts for 22.5, 30, 45, and 60 degree angles that - when installed - provide two parallel surfaces which you then crank down on with a bar clamp. They make getting the joints clamped tightly and minimize joint slippage considerably.