Adam Savage’s One Day Builds: Poker Table!

13 thoughts on “Adam Savage’s One Day Builds: Poker Table!”

1. Interestingly enough, as a former trim carpenter, most issues regarding brad nailer safety wasn’t hitting your hand behind the piece you were nailing, but from hitting a screw head or something behind the piece of wood and having the nail curl back out the front. On tiny pieces I was taught to hold them with the bottom part of the grip of my hammer and have a hole or two in the rubber that are testament to that.

   Also, when using a brad nailer, it’s not uncommon for the nail to curl for no apparent reason. You can control that by changing which direction you hold the nailgun (ie rotating it 90°). The nails aren’t round, but are a small square/rectangle shape with a chisel tip. The nail will curl (mostly) along the sides that have the chamfer cut into them for the tip. By nailing with the tip oriented perpendicular to the front or back that reducing the chance of blowing out the front/back. Also, they make a ton of different length nails. Using a shorter length if you can will also reduce blowouts as opposed to say the full 2″ length nails.

   And finally on glue, the glue really holds everything the nails are really just there to hold it while the glue dries. When gluing joints for stain though, spread the glue out, but don’t go all the way to the front face of the joint with the glue. If glue squeezes out the front of a joint, it can be a pain as glue really doesn’t accept stain very well if at all.

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2. Adam mentioned there’d be a link to the youtube video he used as inspiration in the comments, but I did not see them on YouTube, nor here. Any chance to get that updated?

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3. It is here: https://youtu.be/AbJrTIjvcQw

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4. Bet you wish this video was made after you discovered the air powered stapler. Haha, posted this literally 15 seconds before the part of the video where Adam explains that it hadn’t arrived yet!

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5. Did he just comment on “how small this shop is”? I think the table he’s building is bigger than my workspace.

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6. I would love to see another tour of the shop! Seeing this video makes it really clear a LOT has filled out since then!

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7. Thanks much!

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8. I bought one of those 23G nailers mostly on the recommendation of the videos here and whilst I’ve not used it a huge amount yet I’ll confirm it’s as good as Adam says for pinning glue joints. I’ve now bought the slightly bigger brad nailer version as well for another job.

   For the foam cutter, although it doesn’t have the shoe on the end to keep it vertical I have an electric carving knife (of the kitchen variety) that I’ve used for the same sort of task. Much less expensive (and slightly terrifying… Look out for your fingers!)

   So, a poker table top to fit over the pool table next?

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9. I bought a Grex pinner years and years ago and the only place I could get pins for it was Woodcraft so I used them very sparingly. Now they’re suddenly everywhere. I do like the non-safety tip on that Senco but I’m not sure it’s worth cross-grading until I wear the thing out.

   Sawdust gives me horrible rashes and I often find myself complaining about the lackluster dust extraction on my overpriced Festool router, but then I see other people use routers with no dust collection at all and I’m suddenly reminded just how much it actually does pick up. I can probably never go back to that world without an Epi-Pen handy.

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10. “It’s quick and dirty down here”

    “Mmm, I hoped it would seat 7”

    Exactly my problem with quick and dirty. 🙂 It annoyed me a lot in my scientific work, usually it ended up in people working for longer on a wrong direction.

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11. Not a huge poker player, but this lets me thinking on how much harder could be to make a pool table to hide beneath the dinner table

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12. Trying to find the speed cloth that was used for this project. I like the color and the fact it’s unsuited. Anyone know a source of supply for what Adam used?

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13. I realize this is a late comment – but Adam, have you not used the powershot style hand stapler? When you can’t use a pneumatic, they save your hands a lot of pain, because the leverage is better.

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