Making beer garden tables

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pcrawford

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Hey guys,

Has anyone ever built a beer garden table? I'm trying figure out that best way to make a traditional Bavarian table. 10' long by 2' wide. We want to make them out of wood and with the accompanying bench. In germany these tables have fold up legs but I was thinking of just making it with wood legs.

We are thinking about making them out of a nice wood that can be stained or painted but doesn't require too much maintenance. I can get 10' lengths of this environmentally friendly glass impregnated wood that seems to be the right material. Maybe 4"x4" for the legs.

I'm working on the design but thought I'd use this wealth of knowledge to see if anyone has any great ideas.

Thanks!
-Patrick
 
I don't really know what the look of a traditional Bavarian table is, but, especially if you're going for a rustic look, a great wood to use is that of old railroad ties. It's normally very cheap to buy (if you're lucky, you can even get it for free), and it requires practically no maintenance at all.

Be ready to sweat a lot while sawing it, though...
 
I have what we call the Beer table. It is a little wider than the traditional beer table at ~ 3ft. Our top is made from 2 pieces of "manufactured" lumber - it is short lengths of 3" wide strips all glued up to make a 96" X 20"? piece. I glued two of these together. There is a rectangular frame underneath (made from 1"X4"s, doubled on the short lengths) The legs are built up out of 4 - 1X4's with the two middle ones 4" shorter to make a mortise that fits over the rectangular frame. The legs and table are attached (removable) by 4 - 3/4" dowels. The legs themselves are H - shaped, but the cross piece is only about 2" above the ground. The crosspiece (2- 1X4's) is attached to the uprights by a mortise and tenon. Here again, since we glued up the legs from 4 length to make them, we simply left a hole for the crosspiece. These were assembled and permanently attached with dowels. To be a bit artistic, the crosspiece sticks out past the legs, and are dog-eared.

So far (its been about 4 yrs) I just have on light coat of stain on it. I'm intentionally trying to build up some more character before adding more finish. We did do some distressing. My favorite was actually to slam a beer bottle down on it. We got a nice arc with little dots on it. BE CAREFUL so the bottle doesn't break!!! Our top is pine so not a lot of effort was required

I made two benches out of a sheet of oak veneered plywood - two wider strips for the seats, and 4 narrow (~4") ones to hide the plywood edge and to stabilize the legs. Ripping a 45 degree angle down the length of a sheet of plywood is really a pain, but it allowed me to hide the edge of the plywood down the length of the bench - it still shows on the ends though. Basically I made a shallow trough with no ends. The legs are made of yellow poplar, glued up to match the width of the bench. These are then glued and attached with recessed screws from above and filled in with dowels. They were also glued and screwed from the sides to help stabilize the legs.

The table is great. When not in use, the legs come off and, since our basement ceiling is unfinished (and cramped) I rigid up some eye bolts and ropes so we can store the table up against the ceiling out of the way
 
I was looking at pics of these tables and benches, and they look like they are just made out of a series of 1x6 or 1x8 boards that are laid side by side. They're probably glued together using a series of biscuits joints. It looks like there are a series of braces screwed to the underside for support. I was actually surprised that it isn't made out of 2x6 or 2x8 lumber. If your going to put this indoors, you could use just about any lumber, just put a coat of polyurethane over the whole thing and you'll never have to worry about it. If it's going outdoors, I'd probably use some cedar or redwood or teak. Anything else, and you are going to have to stain it and/or seal it every few years to protect it from the weather.
 


I found this video great. I built up a top of 2x6's. I'll work on the legs next week. PJJ do you have any pictures of your table?
 
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I don't really know what the look of a traditional Bavarian table is, but, especially if you're going for a rustic look, a great wood to use is that of old railroad ties. It's normally very cheap to buy (if you're lucky, you can even get it for free), and it requires practically no maintenance at all.

Be ready to sweat a lot while sawing it, though...
I don't like to wear the cresote off my arms the next day though..:(
 
Yeah, just read about it on Wikipedia. In my country, ties are made from a couple of very hard, very resilient woods, one of them called "quebracho", and the other one "lapacho", both also very rich in tannins, so creosote is not used. I guess here we don't have that luck...:(
 

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