A-Frame Camping Table

Inspired by Viking A-Frame Tents, this camp table was designed to hold our (anachronistic) Coleman stove and some prep area for our camp kitchen

Tools & Equipment

We used a jigsaw, a drill press, a 1" Forster bit, and a 3/4" sanding drum, plus a belt sander.

Materials

This table was made on the cheap, about $35 worth of wood and a can of polyurethane from a previous project.

2x 1"x4"x6' white wood boards
3x 1" poplar dowels
1x 36"x16" pine project panel

Cutting the Legs

Conveniently, the width of our boards was the same as the diameter of a can of soup, so we traced the radius of the soup can on both ends of the uprights and cut them off with the jigsaw.

The resulting cuts were pretty rough, so we rounded it over on the belt sander, and then found the center of the new radius to drill our top dowel hole. Slotting our top dowel in we made the top of the frame and set it up outside.

Settling the Top

Standard countertops are 32" from the ground in the United States. so we measured up from the ground that far and made a mark on the legs. Coincidentally, that mark was 36" from the far end of the board, so laying out the marks was easier than it could have been.

Back to the drill press, and we drilled the center holes in all four boards.

Back into the front yard and we reassembled everything and sat the project panel onto the dowels and we were 85% done.

Dowels to Length

Since the dowels came in 48" lengths, we cut them all down to 43" so there would be a couple of inches of overlap on either end. We also found that 1" drill bits and 1" dowels make a very tight fit, so we sanded down the insides of the holes with a 3/4" sanding drum so they would fit smoothly (and we wouldn't need the mallet for install or teardown).

Finishing

To help with alignment, we drilled some holes in the ends of the dowels. For the top dowel, we drove copper pins in and rounded them over like rivets as a stop-mark. For the bottom dowels, we drove holes through for pins to be removable and did a little bit of woodburning to mark the 'front' of the piece.

Gave everything a good sanding with 120 and 220 to smooth it out, then we gave it two coats of stain (sanding again with 220 in between) and a final topcoat of polyurethane.