Over the past 28 years we've made thousands of dining tables and hundreds of those have been extension tables, but recently we made something we've never done before--a metal table top with built in extensions off the heads.  That's the glorious thing about custom work. There's always a new creative design to be built from just a picture or straight out of one of our designer's fertile imagination.  Along with the flow of all those creative juices comes the less savory challenge of how to engineer the darn thing.

Recently a client wanted to make our metal double pedestal table with extensions which we had never done before.  Of course it could be done; the table needed to be completed re engineered.

Here's a top view showing the framing system that is usually under our metal tops.  This construction wouldn't work for this project.  The grid frame wouldn't allow the tracking system for the extensions to go through.

To give us the space we needed we attached a 3/4" plywood sub straight underneath the metal top to provide strength without impeding the tracks.  

We found this new technique superior to the old framing system since it avoided having to make small tack welds between the frame and the top and thus eliminated tiny divets on the table surface caused by the heat of the mig weld. Have I lost you yet?  The mechanical details don't matter, but what does matter is that by having an engineering challenge on one particular project  we found a better, stronger way of constructing all our metal table tops, proving that necessity is indeed the mother of all inventions.

Another first time detail on this table is the designer decided to make the extensions wood to counter the metal top.  She knew her client would always use a table cloth when the extensions were in so why make them three times heavier than necessary?  Smart thinking!