Building the base or play surface of your table is pretty basic. Essentially what you are looking to end up with is the starting point in which the foam, felt and rail will sit on. I chose the standard oval shaped, which is more common in card rooms and casinos. You can make your base just about any size you wish, depending on your needs, available space, and preference. You want something wide enough that there is room for the cards, chips, pot, etc. but not so narrow that you are touching each other. Typical overall width for a table is 42" to 44".
I chose 40" wide X 96" long for the table I was building.
Once I had this, I needed to cut the round edges of the oval style table. I started with a 40" wide table base, so I measured 1/2 that distance (20 inches) from each end which gave me the center point in which to pull an arc around the table and cut. This is a very simple was to make this line / cut which requires either a nail or screw and a piece of string. You can use a piece of wood, cardboard, straight edge, square, etc. Anything that will give you the radius from the center line out.
Not required, but nice to knock off the freshly cut edges. Makes the material nicer to work with as you go through assembly, etc.
Once you have both ends cut and cleaned up, lay the ply wood flat and your banquette table on top of it, centering it on all sides and screwing the two together with drywall screws.
There is a drawback to using a banquette table: It's heavy! Moving the table by yourself can be tough and the table can weigh well over 100 pounds when done. An alternative to starting with a banquette table is using folding legs which are sold individually (or taken off an existing table). If you are not starting with a banquette table, and are using folding legs or another type of leg assembly, you will want to add some additional support to the bottom of the table surface to prevent it from bowing or sagging over time. Other tables I've built where I didn't use a banquette table, I use 2X4's running the length of the table, spread out the width of the folding legs as seen in this example.
Once that is complete, it's time to flip the table over, and put the foam and felt on. Clean your surface free of sawdust and spray 3M 45 (works well) or 3M 77 (works better, but can't be used on all foams such as headliner foam) on the surface of the table. You want a good even coat of spray adhesive across the entire table, with an extra bit around the outside edge.
On my first table, I flipped the table back over on the ground on top of the velveteen and cut the foam around the edges where I could pull it to wrap around and staple on the underside as shown here:
(see my note down below on an easier and much cleaner way of putting your cloth on the table)
Lesson learned note:
I've learned (after about 10 or so tables) that you don't want to "GLUE" the felt / material down to the foam, however, I have found that when you spray a very light haze of the 3M spray adhesive on the foam and then roll the material out across it from one side to the other, it will prevent the cloth from rolling / bunching up when you are pushing a pot to someone. It also resolves the issue of having wrinkles in your material which you can't see with the table face down. Once you have your material on the surface, pull the cloth snug around the corners of your table and staple to the edge of the ply wood, rather than stapling on the underside. Once you have stapled around the entire edge of the table, cut the material flush with the bottom of the table as seen here:
