How to build your very own folding, octagonal poker table!

Cutting out the cup holders.

Okay, drilling the holes for the cup holders! Now the first thing I will say is check, check and then re-check that you have the right size of hole cutter attached to your drill BEFORE you make your first cut. In fact, use an off cut piece first to make sure that the hole size is correct. Unfortunately, I did not! I was supposed to cut the holes with a 95mm hole saw. Unfortunately for me, I bought a cheap set of hole saws which were unmarked and used the 100mm cutter instead for my first cut! If I was to look on the bright side, at least I didn't cut them all that size. It's not a total disaster as I will use something to thicken up the hole so that the cup holder sits more snugly.

Also in this part of the process I found another minus point for using MDF. As I have said I bought a bunch of cheap hole cutters. When I tried to cut the holes out, my new battery drill didn't have a look in. Fortunately for me, my neighbour and Poker Pal Chris had just borrowed the doctor of power drills from his dad and let me use it. This to struggled to cut through the MDF more than likely because of the cheap hole cutters I bought. I ended up cutting 2 holes at a time (slowly) and removing the hole cutter and cleaning the teeth during the process. As you can see from the pictures, the MDF has been scotched and burnt during the process. Not that this is a problem for the table, more for the fact my house smelt like it was on fire!

All eight holes drilled in the table.

See the scorch marks left by the hole cutter.

Once inserted, the cup holders are a little loose so I plan to get some foam tape to insert round the hole to make the cups a tighter fit.

The last thing I did to the cup holders was add some window / door insulation tape to each hole. This is basically sticky tape with a 6mm foam thickness. It means that the cup holders are held nicely in place but are still able to be removed as required for cleaning!

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