Stressed Leaf-Spring Birch Tables

Here we had a bit of fun - creating ourselves a conference room table!

We used a fundamental structural principle to allow seemingly impossibly slender plywood to cantilever and yet take the load of a person sitting right on the corner.

The plywood layers were pre-bent upwards and then glued together. Stainless steel cables were then used in the corners to prestress against the camber in the plywood. This simple mechanism ensures that minimal deflection will occur at the corner of the table until the load applied exceeds the prestress of the cable.