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Two of our Cabinetmakers adjust the hardware as they build a Delaware table with the Brandywine Slide mechanism.
Brandywine Mechanism
Take some heavy duty ball bearing drawer slides and bolt a heavy and thick table top to them. Set a pair of these back to back so they meet in the center of the table. There's a space underneath the top of the table that's a nice place to put the leaves when you aren't using them.
A view of the Brandywine mechanism showing the ball bearing slides, the side of the slider box, and one leaf inside the box.
A Brandywine table with the top closed. The side of the slider box is easily visible below the table top, between the legs.
The advantages of the Brandywine mechanism are:
The top can be heavy, because it glides on ball bearings. The base can be very massive and heavy, because you don't need to move it in order to open the table. This gives you the winning combination of ease of use and solidity.
With a few geometric tricks, the mechanism can be used in round and square tables, although you will not be able to store the leaves inside. (The leaves on a round or square table are just as long as the diameter - they won't go underneath.)
The space underneath the top can be used to store leaves.
The whole mechanism/storage compartment is relatively compact, so you have a lot of latitude for different base and top designs.
With the proper slides, the top can be removed and replaced without tools.
With the advantages come a few limitations:
Although the mechanism itself can fit tables down to 48" in diameter, it will not store the leaves if the table top is smaller than 82", and narrower than 42". The size of the box that stores the leaves is determined by the width of the table, and you need to have a certain amount of clearance at the end of the table so that someone can sit there. The table can be quite long, and quite wide, but not so short and narrow.
Only two leaves can store inside the table, and they should not be wider than 12". The leaves and the sliders (which carry the top) must all fit inside the leaf box, which is visible under the top of the table in the picture. This box ends up being about 6" deep, which means that if it is too wide, it runs into your legs. If the leaves are wide, or there is a large stack of them, then the box must be wider to compensate. (There is a solution to this - see the Penn Valley mechanism). It is possible to use more than two leaves in the table, but then storage of the extra leaves becomes inconvenient.
