On 16 Dec 2004 16:03:15 -0800, "sab" wrote:

I saw a couple of years ago a beautiful rosewood ROUND dining table in
hong kong that had hidden leaves (3) in the middle base of the table
that allowed it to expand to this 10-12 person round dining table.

This was a fairly common design in Georgian times. The top spilts into
triangles and slides radially outwards. Separate leaves are then
inserted into the gaps. There were usually three new leaves, sometimes
six or nine. Some of the larger tables could be expanded in steps,
with either three or six leaves added at a time.

The expanded shape isn't perfectly circular, but it's good enough for
playing King Arthur.

The drawback is that it works best on large tables. The central pillar
is the only support for the cantilevered leaves, so it needs to be
reasonably wide. In a small table this can leave you with little
legroom underneath. Better designs have a pillar with a wider top
and narrower support. Crude designs use a simple cylinder or prism.