opening the cherry dining table

i wrote a pretty long blog post about this table a couple of weeks ago, but i never detailed how the runners worked. we had to do a little creative engineering to get the pedestal to open at the right moment, but, in the end, it all worked slick.

this just in from the table's owner ...
there is a you tube video showing the opening and closing the table at this link here
here's how it worked ... click the photos to enlarge them ... above, you can see the channels we routed in the top of the column base. the purpose of those was to stop the first set of runners that the table top halves are attached to after they open far enough to insert only the first leaf. with more than one leaf, we wanted the base to open so the center leg could support the four foot span required for all three leaves.
we added little aluminum pieces to the bottom of the runners and those stop the first two runners after about 9" of travel. you can hear the stops engage in the video. the second runners were screwed to the base top itself and engage to open the pedestal once everyhting seen below is unlocked.
there is a central locking device which sam fabricated in the metal shop to secure the base of the pedestal when it's closed ...
this shows the two halves opened to the 'one leaf' position
as usual, we burned through some mdf mockups figuring the whole thing out but, as usual, it was worth it ... great client .. great project ...