hi, i spend many sleeples nights trying to solve it i did it this way:
first create custom table model like this, and ascribe it to the table:
then to remove column from view you do
where columnId is column number from table model
to bring it back
you have to remember about:

• repaint() each time you add, remove column
• always remove columns from the last one, because if you have columns 0,1,2,3 and remove column(0) the indexes are recount and you will have columns 0,1,2
• use
  Java Syntax (Toggle Plain Text)

  table.convertColumnIndexToModel(table.getSelectedRow());

  table.convertColumnIndexToModel(table.getSelectedRow());
  first if you want to read data
• add, change, remove rows should be done on tableModel, not on the table directly

i guess there is many ways to do this, but i found only this one to work
its get a little bit more tricky if you want to sort the table too...

I think you have to call the revalidate method on your JTable, after removing or adding a column, to make it work. Its been a while, but I think that's the advice Ezzaral gave me when I asked a similar question before (I could be misquoting him; whatever advice he gave me worked).