kitchen table

Most RV manufacturers use 3/4" MDF with formica type material glued to the top.

I would glue strips of hardwood (oak, cherry or maple) together and then shape it to fit your needs.

Once I used a hollow door to make a table. Hollow doors have a honeycomb inside made out of hard cardboard. They are lightweight but strong. You can cut it to fit and then add a wood strip to finish off the cut end. Only drawback is the thickness of the door.

Strength and light weight are not so much in the choice of the wood as in the method of construction, so as to use as little material as possible.

Hollow core is one method, another is to build a frame with reinforcing across the middle, with a lightweight top panel (often plastics, or laminated from wood and plastic). Recall the construction of the paneled doors used in the early part of the 20th century, or a card table. These methods are still used to make lightweight tables for home use.

Solid wood--western red cedar or spruce
Plywood--1/2" birch with wood edging or plastic laminate

the bear II wrote:
Most RV manufacturers use 3/4" MDF with formica type material glued to the top.

I would glue strips of hardwood (oak, cherry or maple) together and then shape it to fit your needs.

Once I used a hollow door to make a table. Hollow doors have a honeycomb inside made out of hard cardboard. They are lightweight but strong. You can cut it to fit and then add a wood strip to finish off the cut end. Only drawback is the thickness of the door.

Tables, shelves, doors. etc. are often made like a hollow core door. Technically this construction is called a torsion box. You can rip strips of plywood to the desired thickness of your table top (less the top and bottom "skin" and then notch the strips every 4-5" to create a cross lapped grid. glue "skins" to the top and bottom; cover with formica if you like and you will have a very strong table top that is very resistant to flexing or warping.

We have an old dog that has trouble with steps. I used this technique to make a ramp from 1 x 2 firring strips covered with 1/4" luan. Not only can the dog walk on it but an adult can walk on it too.

It's usually more about the hardware and connections, than the tabletop material.

Tell us more about how you want it to work.

As a woodworker, I can say that MDF is far from the lightest material. In fact, it's often the heaviest. Plywood, OSB will be lighter. Particle board will be lighter too.

MDF and particle board don't like to get wet. So you'll need to consider keeping them dry, sealing the edges, etc. Neither take screws well. But MDF is flat and smooth and makes a great substrate material.

And, MDF, doesn't bend at all. It'll just snap off a big chunk. So depending on the support and the span, you might want to take that into consideration.

So far the woodworking I'm doing in ours is using 3/4 and 1/2" plywood. If it needs to look nice, then I use "Baltic Birch" plywood; if it doesn't then it's plywood from Home Depot.

When it comes to strength and stiffness, things get interesting. Again it depends on the span, but a sheet of 3/4" plywood might be strong enough but it may bend.

Glue two sheets together and you might get some stiffness back, but it'll weigh more and be thicker.

In an attempt to make this reply actually useful, I'd suggest starting with a sheet of plywood. If it bends too much, then we can try some things to make it stiffer.

One of the best approaches is called a "torsion box" where you sandwich a frame of solid wood supports between two sheets of plywood.


I'm just finishing up a knockdown bed for our RV and will post some pictures in a few days.

Not sure how your table is set up, but our has the swing down bracket mount on the wall and a single folding leg. It is pretty stable and sturdy when in the up position and swings down to the bed position in just a couple seconds. Because it is mounted to the wall I don't have to support all the weight. Obviously if you do not have a booth dinette on a wall this will not work. It is made from some 3/4" material, very sturdy and does not sag. We have had 2 adults sleep on the dinette several times.

Well my table is MDF and it is warped. I am waiting for a reply from the factory as to the make and model number of the laminate so I can make a new one out of cabinet plywood.

+1 on the torsion box. But realize a thin skin might be punctured (think hollow core door). You'll need to reinforce the area(s) where the leg(s) attach.

Cypress has one of the best strength-weight ratios,I'm told. It too, though is soft and vulnerable to dings and dents.

A 49" x 97" sheet of 3/4" MDF weighs about 96 lbs. So, yea, it's not light, though there a "lightweight" version.

My table is retained to make up part of a bed platform. I used glued up pine panels from the big box store and edge banded it with some tropical hardwood. It is about half the weight of the formica clad MDF table top it replaced.