Project story

Removable Railing Table

A laptop perch for a deck railing: 2x4 slats over clamping cleats, all from one board.

by Greg·width, depth, and rail width

Contents 3 sections

How kerf affects cut planning
Designed to be (re)movable
Customize and build it

My friend Sean had an idea for this project once he saw I was building this website. He's constantly using a laptop perched on his deck railing in fear of it falling off. Fortunately, his laptop has remained in one piece so far, but a fall is inevitable and we wanted something a little less.. precarious. The catch was he only had a single 2x4 in his garage.

So I came up with a simple, removable railing table that could be built from that single 2x4 and—like everything on this site—the dimensions and plans are fully customizable in real time. As a bonus if your configuration won't fit on a single board you'll see an error. Go ahead, try it for yourself!

Fig 2Configure your railing width, top width, and top depth for your exact needs.

An 8-foot 2x4 is 96 inches and that number is the hard constraint. The maximum usable table size for a standard 2x6 railing is about 13x17 inches, perfect for a 16" laptop or 13" laptop with room for a coffee.

How kerf affects cut planning

When trying to maximize use of a single board, it's important to understand , which is the amount of material taken off by the width of the saw blade – usually 1/8 of an inch. So, if we want to cut a 14-inch long piece, we actually need to account for 14-1/8" for every piece, when calculating how much board we have left over in the design.

Fig 3Six pieces from one 2x4: four slats, then the two cleats off the tail. Everything the table is made of is in this frame.

Designed to be (re)movable

While being easily removable wasn't a hard requirement for this project, it's nice to be able to move a table around when needed. It's also nice to not have to put screws or bolts through your nice railing. And, since we're not applying a finish to this project (you can if you want), it's also easy to keep it out of the rain.

Nothing about this table attaches to the deck. No clamps, brackets, or screws into the railing. Two run underneath the top platform and perform two jobs. (1) They hold the top slats in place and (2) they provide a secure grip against the railing so the table doesn't tip off.

The cleats are screwed on from the bottom of the table, so no visible screw holes affect the usage of the top surface.

Fig 4Both cleats screwed down, with the top still upside down on the bench and the slats ghosted to show where the screws stop. The daylight between the cleats is the railing cap's width plus an eighth of an inch. The cap board itself makes the perfect spacer while you work.

Customize and build it

The shopping list below is for the table you see, in the sizes the store actually sells. It comes from the same program as the model, so it can never fall out of date. Set your dimensions and both regenerate together.