Which wood to use for a cocktail base? How to finish it?

[Crowquill]

As mentioned in another thread I'm cutting away the water-damaged wood and just building an inset base to my Ms. Pac cocktail.

Now I'm left with the question as to what will be durable enough to work as a base that will be kicked on a regular basis. I was originally thinking a hardwood with some type of durable black paint. I'd rather not do laminate if I can avoid it. Would MDF hold up well enough?

What do you guys think?

The original thread is here: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=65559.0l

[ChadTower]

Depends on what you mean by kicked.  If just regular "I'm moving around and kicked it a bit", pretty much any decent piece will work.  If you're talking about "I didn't clear the level and now I'm putting the boots to the cab", your issue is probably more the players than the wood.

[ScottS]

To be honest, I would expect laminate to hold up better than just about anything else. That said, you probably don't need as much durability as you think. Most cocktail tables are made with cheap plywood or MDF. So it's not like you need to skin the cab with 18-gauge sheetmetal and paint it with Por15, for example.

While I'm impressed with the weight of MDF, I'm not very impressed with it's strength or durability. I'd probably use plywood or MDO for this... but then again, that's what I tend to use for everything 

[NiteWalker]

I'd use laminated baltic birch plywood. Very light, super strong and durable.

I can't find MDO around here scott, how are the inner plies? I like baltic birch because the inner plies are pretty much void free.

[Crowquill]

Depends on what you mean by kicked.  If just regular "I'm moving around and kicked it a bit", pretty much any decent piece will work.  If you're talking about "I didn't clear the level and now I'm putting the boots to the cab", your issue is probably more the players than the wood.

I'm mosty concerned that it's the bottom edge of the table that we'll be sitting at both ends of. It's bound to get kicked some in this situation. I guess if I make it out of plywood it'll always be easy enough to replace later if I do have problems. I could always cover it with laminate at a later time too. I have some spare MDF, but I'm afraid that if a corner gets hit it'll get trashed. I guess if I use the birch plywood it might even be decent enough I could just stain it instead of slathering it with black paint. Matching the woodgrain laminate might be tough, but possible.

[ChadTower]

That's what T molding is for... not for looks, to protect edges.