[Colosnoball]

Hello all. I’m designing a table for serving food and am wondering what you all think about the sturdiness of it as it will be quiet long but relatively narrow. I will be designing the table top at 9 ft long and 16 in wide with 3 x 3 in square legs on the outside corners and an apron going around the back and sides but with drawers at the front. because it is a flip top table, it will either be 3/4 in or 1 1/2 in thick. The apron will be attached by mortise and tenon to the legs. I’m thinking of adding corner blocks to the insides of the legs. I am still worried about the length of the table however and potential sagging or integrity issues. What do you all think? Do I need extra legs or the corner blocks? Would I be okay potentially just adding something else underneath the tabletop for increased strength? I’d prefer not to add the extra legs if I don’t have to as I don’t like the way it looks. I’ve attached pictures of my design so you know what I’m talking about. Any help would be appreciated. I’m still learning here.
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What kind of wood are you planning to use for its construction. Some good grade cabinet hardwoods are plenty stable at 3/4" if supported about every 42" or less.
You need a much deeper skirt to adequately support the drawers and drawer contents, especially if they will be heavily loaded with metal tableware. This will also add stability and provide more anti-racking movement. Especially with the skirts tenoned into the legs. You might want to make the skirts 1.25"-- 1.5" thick, also.
Your flip out top idea will interfere with access to the drawers below being insufficiently deep enough to expose the contents, unless you are only opening the drawers with the table top folded up. You'll want to put dedicated drawer stops on the drawers so that they are not inadvertantley pulled all the way out of the table with the top flipped outward.The flip out top will also add a substantial amount of instability for a narrow long table.

Depending on how much room you need for storage on the lower shelf/stretcher The space between the bottom of the skirt below the drawers and the top of the bottom shelf/stretcher would possibly limit a deeper skirt idea.

A 1.5" thick top with another 3/4" flip out extension would be best, in my opinion, if you are determined to use a flip out top. Supporting it with several soss type hinges or longer mortised inlet chest or drop-leaf desk top support hinges would allow the front edges of the top to be somewhat self supporting. If instead you will want to use pull out sliders between the drawers, I would make them at least 1.5" in height set to catch the flipped out part of the top and spaced 30"--42" between the drawers. You will want the two boards on both sides of each drawer support to be the full height of the top and bottom 2.25" plus the drawer height.

You may want to add a 2.25" in the front skirt panel above the drawers giving easier access to the drawer opening and add an additional 2.25" in the skirt depth below the drawers. For this length of table stretcher for the shelf, I would make this in one continuous length with one or two cross supports and add another short skirt balancing the 2.25" upper design lines on the drawer skirt.

There are lots of ways to construct all of the joints. Look at several ways and decide what is best for you. Glue and screws, dowels, biscuits, mortise/tenon, sliding dovetails and dovetail drawer joints are all good ways to proceed. If you are using strictly softwoods such as cedars, pines etcetera you may want to be adding several glue blocks and table buttons.

I believe (like Johnip) that you will want to bolt the back skirt of the table to the wall so that you can have dancers on top of the table. It's not going to be stable otherwise. Its way top heavy, even if it was only 24" tall. I suspect your planning a height of somewhere between 34" and 44". It's a nice project and if you decide to dress up the design with moulded, tapered or intarsia inlays and bandings, it could be a real thing of beauty.