What are you going to make out of this week’s empty Altoids tin? If you’ve already taken a pocket s’mores on a camping trip, made a tiny emergency or fishing kit for travel, and even created a tiny camping stove, you might be running out of ideas. However, whether you’re planning another trip, or you’re just sitting around the house, bored, you can have fun with your Altoids tin. Turn it into a pool table and you can carry it around in your pocket.
An Altoids tin is perfect for making a pool table. It has a hinged lid so you’ll have no trouble keeping everything in the small, metal box. You’ll need just a few materials to make it. A cheap piece of foam – or even a piece of cardboard – will raise the height of the table inside the tin. With foam, draw around the tin, then cut the foam to that size. Cut each corner off to make the pockets. If you’re using cardboard, cut it to be larger than the tin, then bend the four sides down so that the cardboard fits snugly into the bottom of the tin. Make sure you cut the corners before folding the sides. Whether you’re using foam or cardboard, glue it to the inside bottom of the tin.
You can cover the foam or cardboard with a small carpet sample, a piece of felt, or even a piece of cloth. Green, of course, is a good color, but you can use any shade of material. Just make sure that you allow for the thickness of the chosen material; the foam or cardboard will have to be raised higher for a piece of felt but lower for a piece of carpet. Cut the material to be the size of the bottom of the can. Cut the corners out and glue the material to the top of the cardboard or foam.
Beads are perfect for making tiny cue balls for the pool table. Beads that 6mm are perfect but just make sure that they’re perfectly round, and not faceted. Faceted beads won’t roll as well as the round ones. Rather than the usual amount of balls on a full-size table, you’ll only need 6 for your pocket pool table.
With a small-diameter, copper wire, you can make the rack. It can be helpful to position the balls as they would go inside the rack, then draw around them on a piece of paper. That is, position three beads in a row, then a row of two, and a row of one. Tightly pack them together and draw around the triangle. Cut the length of the wire to be equal to three sides of the triangle, and bend the wire where needed. Make a slightly different rack by using toothpicks instead of wire.
A length of copper wire can also be used to make the cue stick. Or, use a piece of a small-diameter dowel, or a section cut from a wooden skewer. Cut it to a length that will fit inside the Altoids tin, diagonally. Have fun with your little pool game that saves a boring day, or accompanies you on a camping trip.