to 36" long (most home centers will do one cut for free). You
may find 4' to be more comfortable as height for now. Those
who have access to a wood shop with a thickness planer will
find it to be worth the time to plane the 1” dimension which
measures ¾” thick, down to ½" thick instead of buying the craft
boards that are ½" thick. Either method will keep the weight of
the layout/module down, but still provide plenty of strength.
*Note* The reason for the variety of types of wood was due to
some pieces being warped, and I wanted to start with lumber
that was as straight as possible. You could easily build this with
one type of wood.
The total for all the lumber was $75.
Fabrication
We start by laying out the parameter framework. To make the
module adaptable to other East Penn Modules, I first start with
a 3/8” lip which both allows for easy leg construction and con-
nection to other modules built to the same interface standard.
Down the line, modifying the module to have built-in folding
legs may be worth your time, but to make the initial construc-
tion simple, we will use the ¾” legs.
The longest part of the module is 60” long. I subtract the two
3/8” lips (3/8 + 3/8 = 6/8 = ¾) which gives the length of 59 ¼”
for the two runners (since I could only find ½” wood with a
maximum length of 48 inches, I will splice two boards to get
to 59 ¼”). Now I calculate the length of the two boards that
constitute the ends. Both the runners are ½” thick, which
added together, is 1” thick, so I subtract 1 from 30 and find
they should be 29” wide. All the boards except the 3/8” thick
mentioned above are ½ x 4s (colored in green on figure 2). To
