16 May 2020

Campervan folding table


Below are pics from a test-fitting of the fold-down-table for the van.

I know it's ugly at the moment, but so was the van when I had the roof cut off. Currently edges are not rounded/trimmed. Surfaces are not oiled/varnished. Floor coverings are endgame. Walls will be installed last so don't ask. Old folding chairs are merely placeholders to show scale and space, though they will be used for some time as the next priority is the kitchen cabinet.

The table is 900x700mm. The leg is a piece of snowy-gum that I collected from Mt.Buffalo in Vic.au back when I collected the van from NSW. It's a high altitude slow growing eucalyptus, very dense, but not as heavy as redwood. It was intended as a walking stick but I never got around to whittling it down. Now it has purpose.

The leg-hinge is just a 16mm Tas-Oak dowel into some redwood ends. The dowel has a piece of 4mm ply as a gusset into the leg approx 100mm deep...you can see in the pics... Overall it's not as rigid as I'd like, but it was all made from scraps I had laying around. The table is certainly as rigid as any portable camping table.

The table pivots against the van wall on 8mm steel rods inserted about 150mm into the timber. The steel rods came out of some plastic conveyor rollers that had discolored from UV exposure and couldn't be mixed with new ones and were thrown out. I will install a latch to keep the table against the wall eventually; probably magnetic for stationary quick-use, and an additional mechanical latch for travel-mode.