Thanks Tom, I had not thought about leather. You just got credit for helping
design Rutu. :-)

I was planning to use vinyl drafting table cover but leather sounds a lot
more elegant. Just have to watch out for coffee stains. When you get into
low surface energy plastics like Teflon you start running into adhesive
problems and paper charts tend to float on the surface and slide off.
Leather is also less expensive than drafting table cover and a lot less than
thick Teflon sheet.

--
Glenn Ashmore

I'm building a 45' cutter in strip/composite. Watch my progress (or lack
there of) at: http://www.rutuonline.com
Shameless Commercial Division: http://www.spade-anchor-us.com

"Tom Dacon" wrote in message
...
When I built my own chart table, I started out with the linoleum-like
material that is used on drafting tables. It would be ideal except that it
expands and shrinks in dimensions with heat. So if the sun is shining in
the doghouse window onto the chart table the material expands and
wrinkles. What I ended up with was leather. I went to a leather store -
Tandy's - and bought a large enough piece of skin to cover the chart
table. I turned it over and used a regular old woodworking plane, honed
sharp, to shave it to a consistent thickness, and then placed it in a
shallow recess on the chart table, surrounded by a teak frame. Contact
cement holds it down. Works great.

HTH,
Tom Dacon