Taking your thingamabob you made, go ahead and give yourself plenty of space and mark the vinyl and cut it out.
Now figure out how much time you have spent so far building your poker table because that is about how much time it will take you to finish the poker table (not really, but it was close for me).
Save yourself a lot of trouble and get yourself an electric or air stapler. There are many electric staplers on the market and a lot of them do not work very well. I bought this stapler at Harbor Freight for $10 and works great as long as I do not use ARROW brand staples. I bought ACE brand staples at the ACE Hardware store and they work great.
Your biggest problems are going to be folds in your vinyl while stapling. If you really don't care if you have folds or not, it should go pretty easy. I personally hate folds and think it looks pretty bad when you walk up to a poker table with folds. You may have to redo sections if you want it to be perfect. Even on my 3rd rail, I found myself pulling out staples in areas and redoing it.
Where to start. You will start only stapling the outside first. I have found that it is best to put some staples in the middle (Number 1) and then pull the vinyl and then put a few staples in before the curves of the rail (Number 2). Then apply the staples between 1 and 2. Usually I only put a few staples on the side just to hold it because I have always found myself pulling these when the rail is almost done to get it tighter.
Once both sides have staples (on the outside only) go ahead and pull the vinyl tight and put a few staples on both ends (Number 3). Now put the other areas (number 4) and put a few staples in.
By doing it this way, you should not end up with big folds in a certain area. It would be very bad to just start on one side and going all the way around because more than likely you will end up with some pretty big folds at the end that you will not be able to get rid of unless you take out all the staples and start over.
Just keep it mind that it is normal to have to take staples out and redo certain sections to get the vinyl perfect so there are no wrinkles.
After you have the outside all done, you can now work on the inside. You may have to cut some slits in your vinyl to make it wrap around the inside rail. Notice in the picture below that there are few staples on the straight side area. After I do the inside, I usually pull these staples out and then pull the vinyl tight and put a lot more staples in it.
Here is a shot of what it looks like under one of the rails that I have made. you will use A LOT of staples.
After your rail is finished just put it on top of your poker table and you are ready. For legs, I bought some folding ones at home depot for around $17.
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Have fun making your poker table!
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robertkelly(AT)barncow.com