Brace-Free Stiff Tabletop Examples

The below examples are really just a guide and will not guarantee results in all situations. They are simply a collection of things we have either tried or seen our customers complete with good results.

Plywood - Tables

• 24mm thickness will be suitable for a table up to around 2 meters in length, just under the length of an 8'x4' sheet.

• 32mm thick will work up to around a 3 meter length, just under a 10'x5' sheet.

Plywood - Benches

• Without any support a standard 24mm thick sheet wont really hold any more than 1 adult without it bouncing.

• A 32mm will support up to around 1.5 meters and 3 to 4 adults.

• 50mm will support up to around 3 meters and 5 - 6 standard sized adults. You would however be pushing it on the weight for the hairpin legs so make sure you go for either a heavy duty 3 rod hairpin, or some of our industrial box section legs.

Scaffold Boards - Tables

• Scaffold boards are designed to hold a lot of weight. A single thickness board (38mm) will make a pretty solid table up to its full length of 3.9 meters, assuming everything is tied together well underneath!

Scaffold Boards - Benches

• Standard 38mm board will easily hold 4 adults if not 5, up to around 2 meters in length.

• The thicker 56mm boards will hold quite a few more adults but this is not something we have tested. If you have - let us know! :-)

Solid wood

• Solid wood has a huge range of soft and hard woods to choose from. Its very hard to predict but as a rough guide you could treat a hard wood with the same rough guide as the plywood examples above.

• For softer woods such as pine reduce these by a little and be prepared to need to add some support... read on below!

Chipboard & Particleboard

• While these kinds of woods appear strong to start with, they do have a tendency to sag over time. For anything over more than 1 meter we would suggest adding additional support bracing.