When firefighters at the West Centreville Station 38 wanted a new lunchroom break table, they decided to go big and build a customized 8-foot in diameter behemoth that featured a tabletop embedded with 32 of the county’s fire station emblems. 

The three-month project won support from the community, which donated materials, and firefighters who passed the hat to cover the approximately $1,600 in costs, said Capt. John Morris, one of those behind the effort.

“It was months in the planning and we didn’t know how it would turn out,” Morris said. “But we think it looks pretty good.”

The circular table looks as if it was made for a movie about King Arthur and his medieval knights. It weighs about 400 pounds and dwarves the three rickety folding tables it replaced. The table had to be big enough to seat at one time all the firefighters on a shift, about 11, Morris said. The base and top are made of two wooden wire spools donated from a cable company that was laying replacement wires for the Stone Road widening project, said Lt. John Smith, the firefighter who built the table.

The top is a special design. The firefighters spent weeks collecting and resizing the 32 emblems adopted by each fire station in the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department system, said Mike Duffy, a firefighter/medic at the station who oversaw the table top work. Thirty-one of the emblems, or patches, encircle the outside edge of the table with Station 38’s Civil War themed emblem emblazoned in the middle. An edging of metal diamond plate, which mimics the silver trim of the fire trucks, adorns the outer edge of the top and the bottom pedestal.

Getting all the station emblems onto the top, which is actually a latex banner like the ones used in huge store displays, wasn’t all that easy, Duffy said. When it was first shipped back to the local sign shop from a California plant, the news wasn’t good, Duffy said.

“When I walked into the shop, they all looked at me and I said ‘uh-oh’” Duffy said. “There was a white line that ran through the design. You could barely see it, but it was there.”

Disaster was averted when the local shop called the California manufacturer, who quickly replaced it for free, Duffy said.

“It’s a beautiful table and will probably be here long after all of us are gone,” Morris said.