It’s been a while since I posted something so I thought I should share what I’m currently working on. Besides, it’s to cold in the garage to work even with the propane heater running full blast. I’m Making 2 utility benches for my workshop. I want them to last “forever”, so I have over engineered everything. My design requirements where:
- They must be open underneath for role away tool storage.
- They must be easy to disassemble if/when I move.
- They must be able to support a high static load, in case I want to mount machine tools to them. I chose 1000 pounds as the target load.
It took me awhile to finalize the design, but what I came up with should be easy to build and not cost to much. The overall dimensions are W 72”, D 30”, H 40”– 44” (adjustable). I plan to make the top 4″ thick out of laminated hard maple. I might make it thinner depending on how much maple costs per board foot when I go to purchase it. The legs & horizontal cross bracings are 2.5” x .12” square tubing, & the rear diagonal bracing is 1-1/2” x 3/16” flat bar bolted to the legs.
I’ll post some more pics in a day or two.
Last night I finished up the mounts for the leveling feet of the utility benches I’m making. Of every thing that needed to be done, the mounts where the one thing I was concerned about. Somehow I needed to figure out how to weld the two pieces together, without imparting a lot of distortion in the final part. After reading a bunch of posts on Welding Web, and asking a few question I determined that the best way to do this was by pre-heating the two pieces before welding them together. I used a cheap propane torch to preheat them to over 500°F. I’ll let the pictures do the talking, but I think it worked because the beads are nice and fluid looking.
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I finally got time to finish welding my workbench legs today. I really underestimated the amount of time it was going to take. Though it was more work than I expected, I enjoyed it, and my weld skills are much better now than when I started. Next up is making the Sothern yellow pine tops, so stay tuned.
Now that the steel bases for my work benches are welded together, I can start working on the wood tops. Yesterday my friend Stuart & I made a trip to Menards to pick up the wood I needed. After about an hour of sorting through the lumber rack, we had picked out 14 decent 2″ x 12″ x 14′ Southern yellow pine boards. After we got them back to my place, we cut them in half for stacking and stickering. I thought 275 board feet of lumber would make a bigger pile, than it actually did.
stacked & stickered
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Last week I promised I would provide an updated MC histogram, so Friday night a broke out the moisture meter and took some readings. I found it really interesting, that in only 6 days some of the boards had shown significant changes in MC.
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