Table bottom using plywood and solid wood

[Corey Pelton]

Hello!

Quick question for you guys. I have a 52" x 52" table I'm building. It has a 3/4" wide 1/2" deep rabbet running inside the rails for the table bottom, and I need about 51" square bottom to fill it. Since the sizing is larger than my sheet of 3/4" mahogany plywood, do you think I could rip that and insert a solid piece of mahogany between it, and connect them with dominos? Or, I could add a solid wood border around the ply and do it that way, also using dominos.

Do you think it would be structurally sound, either way? I'm thinking it just might work. If all else fails, I could just slat it with several pieces of wood, but since I have the ply already, I'd rather use that and save the other wood for something else. My biggest concerns are it baring weight and the glue bonding. Also, I don't have any room underneath to make a braced support. So it will need to be able to support its own weight, plus what ever is on top of it, which shouldn't be too heavy (board games, a book or 2)

[Brian Tymchak]

I would leave the plywood sheet intact and extend it's dimensions along its borders. I think that will result in a stronger sheet. With 52" span, I would expect that it will sag with time with even just moderate weight on it. There is a tool called Sagulator that might help you understand how much weight that structure could support. You can google it up. I always like to assume and build for the worst case. If you could possibly double the thickness of the sheet, I think that could help a lot.

[Corey Pelton]

Thanks for the reply, Brian! I went with slating it out. I used 5 11” boards with dominos every 5”. My mock up came out really strong, so I went for it.