Amazing expanding circular table

[damian penney]

Check out these tables, amazing.

"It is a circular table which, when rotated at its outer perimeter, doubles its seating capacity, yet astonishingly remains truly circular."

[Toller]

[RicodJour]

such magazine a bunch of years ago. The leaves weren't automatically inserted - they were separate pieces that had to be manually inserted IIRC - but it was the same general rotate to expand idea.

R

[John L. Poole]

This is amazing, the smaller circle perimeter is a shell containing the leaves which have the arcs of the larger circle. The design of the hardware so that one person can maneuver the transformation is brilliant.

[Swingman]

It is amazing, although the girl in one of the videos is an athlete ... look closely and you can see that it took her body weight to get the thing moving.

Still ... a very nice engineering feat, and impressive bit of woodworking!

[Chris Wolf]

A similar design that operates a little differently is made by Skovby. I've seen it at a local furniture store, and opened and closed it. Go to:

click on "See how this table expands demonstrated on the Skovby SM 32. "

Of course, >Check out these tables, amazing.

[John L. Poole]

Chris Wolf wrote: [snip]

[snip] How are the tables not truly circular? Both tops looked circular in the video.

[Chris Wolf]

I guess it depends on what part of the table you're looking at. At the smaller diameter, the outer "shell" is circular, so I guess that technically their claim is correct. However, at this diameter the inner section that makes up the most visible "body" of the top is certainly not circular. The shell has a peculiar shape (six intersecting arcs) on its inner edge to compensate for this, making the overall appearance misshapen. At the larger diamter, all the arcs are correct and you no longer see the top of the shell, so it looks fine. This may be easier to see in the stills than in the video.

(remove "x" from address for email)

[todd]

Put simply, the pieces in the small table have a particular radius on the curved outer part. Assumedly, this radius is the same as either the radius of the large table or the small one, but it can't be the same as both. Personally, if I was doing it, I'd make it such that it is truly circular when in the larger format.

todd

[Flex Flint]

Note: there's two treads reporting these tables, see subject "Interesting way to build an expanding table."

Link:

[Prometheus]

Well, it's in case you have fourteen over for dinner on your yacht- didn't you read the text? :)

[J T]

Sat, Dec 9, 2006, 8:39pm (EST-3) [e-mail] (damian=A0penney) does sayeth: Check out these tables, amazing.

Amacing, clever, yes; and yeah, you'd have extra room if you took it down to it's smallest size, but then you'd still have the chairs to worry about. They'd eat up the space "saved", meaning, no space saved. So you'are talking about an expensive gimmick, invented to solve only the problem of separating money from people with more money than sense.

If I had enough money to afford a gimmick like that, I'm sure I'd be able to afford a room large enough to keep it in full size. So, instead of buying an expensive toy like that, I'd have a really nice one-piece table instead, with matching chairs.

Now if I just knew where I could find a woodworker I could trust, to make me a table and chairs, once I get my money.

JOAT I am, therefore I think.

[J. Clarke]

The guy who built the yacht the table goes in already figured that one out. The table just adds a little profit margin.

[Roy Smith]

I think it would do it the other way -- make it circular in the small configuration. That way, the perimeter of the large table would be circular arcs joined by straight lines tangent to the arcs. No sharp breaks.

If you made it circular in the large configuration, you would get sharp breaks where the two arcs join.

Of course, the third possibility would be to split the difference and make the arc radius halfway between the two configurations. Then it would be a little off when the table was small and a little off in the other direction when the table was large.

[Roy Smith]

The target market for these is mega-yachts. By definition, the people who own maga-yachts have more money than they know what to do with, and don't mind being separated from what you or I would call a good chunk of change to get what they want. I don't imagine Larry Ellison or Bill Gates would blink an eye if you told him you were going to charge him $10,000 to build him an expanding table for his mega-yacht.

Those mega-yachts come with full-time crews to worry about where to put the extra chairs when you're not using them. For most of us, "Have the helicopter take them back ashore" isn't a storage option that springs to mind most of the time.