Making a new worktable.

[MrCrankyface]

That reminds me that I forgot to mention that it's now sitting the right side up, before the last post.
I'm not sure what it weighs, probably around 50kg/110lbs.
Definitely can't lift it but somewhat manageable to flip it over side to side.
The hockey puck feet are actually amazing, so pleased with it.
The entire frame sits insanely sturdy and it's impossible to slide/push it once it's sitting flat.
The fact that the hockey pucks don't stick to the threaded rods is a bit of a nuisance as they're constantly falling off if you lift it and it can be difficult to get them back in place.
Might incorporate a magnet or something just to make sure they stay on if I ever move the table, whilst it's manageable now to reattach them, it won't be with 400kg of CI and granite plates on it.

 

[mattthemuppet2]

you know those worries I had about sturdiness earlier on? Definitely don't have them anymore

 

[MrCrankyface]

Me neither! I was worried about it possibly being sensitive to tipping with a high center of gravity but that also no longer feels like a problem.
Currently trying to come to a conclusion about what kind of drawers I want ...
Construction will most likely be thick plywood sides/front/back with a thinner plywood bottom.
The real issue is how tall to make them.

I have bad experience with tall drawers as it's hard to get an overview, but having too slim drawers will severely limit what I can put in them.
What I'm currently considering is taping up squares on the floor or something, of the size the drawers will be in depth/width and then laying all of the tools out.
This should help me understand what kind of height is needed and what the most efficient layout would be.

 

[hman]

Your idea for laying out drawer space is FANTASTIC!!!!

 

[mattthemuppet2]

how you make the drawers all depends on what you want to put in them

For my bench, I wanted a couple of shallow drawers under the lathe for tooling and measuring gear, those are maybe 100mm/ 4" deep. Couple of general use draws in the middle and right stacks at the same height, probably 8" deep. Something really handy with those is having half height fronts, so I can just reach in and grab commonly used tools. The bottom ones are deep (think 5 gallon bucket deep), one for my anodising set up, one for steel stock and the other for pretty much anything. The middle ones are somewhere inbetween - 1 for my hand power tools, 1 for my bench grinder and other stuff and another one for my alu stock. The shallow ones have 3/8 to 1/2" plywood bottoms, the deeper ones have 3/4-1" bottoms.

Your needs are going to be different, so you'll need to figure out what goes in them to make them to fit

 

[MrCrankyface]

Still struggling to deal with the tedious task of figuring out the drawers, I turned my attention to the table tops instead.
Just getting them up on the frame was a project all on it's own.


I started looking at what scrap I had laying around and realized I've now had this huge thick walled tube for at last 3 years and never had a use for it so figured I'd cut that up.
It took me several setups and maaaany hours of milling to get this cut up but it was a great learning experience!
Tried both slitting saws and some carbide cutters on this.
Whilst the slitting saws were obviously slower to work with, it was a lot less wasteful, produced less noise and didn't throw hot chips everywhere.


Eventually I had these pieces cut up and could continue actually working...
I only need two of these but I always have a use for flat stock so the remaining two will be more useful than the tube ever was.


And that brings us here!
It was a complete pain hand drilling and tapping all those holes but it sure came out nice!
I need to find some real big counter sunk wood screws so I can fill all those lower holes up then it should be real firm and sturdy!
There's a similar plate on the rear of the table, also holding the CI plates together and holding them down to the frame.
This should eliminate any risk of things moving if I'm excerpting a lot of force on the table or lifting it with the engine hoist.

 

[jwmelvin]

Looks like a good approach. It’s turning out very nice.

 

[MrCrankyface]

Thanks!

I've been using it for a bit now and absolutely love it so far.
Broke my vice in half so I had plenty of use for all the threaded holes in the plates when I was bending up this flat bar.
No real issue with heat transfering down towards the wood despite heating the flatbar several times.


Started looking at drawer construction and ended up with this.
18mm plywood sides and 4mm plywood bottom.
Fairly low grade plywood to keep costs down but with such small strips it's plenty straight and strong enough.
I used the tablesaw to cut slots into each of the 18mm pieces for the bottom to sit securely in, this will all be glued once I know it all works.


Screwed the testbox together and fitted the slides, real satisfied so far!
The opening in the bench itself isn't perfectly square so I've chosen to make the drawers a tiny bit smaller and then shim the slides out with washers to the perfect width, works pretty well.
It seems to be able to carry a lot of weight despite not being glued yet.


So now I just have to do the tedious task of repeating it 7 times...

 

[hman]

Drawer looks nice. Sorry to hear about your vise.

How expensive is plywood nowadays (compared to a year or two ago)? It's absolutely skyrocketed here in the US.

 

[MrCrankyface]

The price for "nice" plywood has gone through the roof here as well.
A regular sheet of birch plywood(18mm x 2440 x 1220) is almost 2000 sek or 230 USD.
These sheets of considerably less quality(warped, holes/gaps between the layers and rough surfaces) were around 500 sek / 59 USD per sheet, same size.
Pretty much all wood supplies are hard to get as well, goes for both sheet goods and regular timber/studs.
Took us weeks when we expanded our backyard decking simply because we couldn't buy the material we needed.
Pretty weird situation overall.

The vice was a freebie so I'm not too down about it, will try to heat it and weld it, will be a nice experiment.
Was looking at buying a new vice but anything good is a lot of money ... Might do like that fireball tools guy did and build my own if the weld repair doesn't work out.