Workbench thread

[sam]

If you have photos and description of your bench that you'd like to add to the thread, post them here and I'll copy them to the workbench thread in the Tips Archive (the Tips Archive is read-only). / ~Sam

[fegarex]

Here's my set up.

[coincutter]

1.jpg

It's slowly getting glued together and I kick my self for not doing this a long time ago.
Drill stands rock and let the scope do more range of magnification. Gotta love that centering table for free.

Comfortable as all get out once you get past the shock and pain of hauling them down to the basement.

Think this may also give you a clue as to how many foot pedals it can take to be a carver and this is just 1/8th of the room!

The fun part is the lappy toppy in the back hooked up to skype, this mornings treat was listening to Rod Cameron and one of his friends give me a mini concert - when they should have been workin they were pickin. Tis a fun toy. We are setting the proggies up to switch from cam to cam around the shop through the scope and what not.

It would be cool if all here would give up the arguing and we just have some fun till we get old and die. Imagine a couple of hundred wacko engravers on webcams.

[msar24]

Used one of my welding tables with a few modifications. Not as nice as the drill stand but it is adjustable. (needs some painit to look pretty).

[Karl Stubenvoll]

I agree wholeheartedly with Mike Cirelli on the use of the foot pedal. As a goldsmith with plenty of diamond setting experience, I am using a foot pedal with a flexible shaft tool for a large percentage of my work. Trying to get a feel for the Airtact/palm control has been strange. Even with trimming the rubber to get finer control, I find myself squeezing the palm control graver rather than pushing it.

My foot still seems to be way ahead in the general scheme, but it's had plenty of practice over the past thirty years. The finger control finally arrived, but I haven't had the time to try it.

[monk]

msar24- i think your all thread setup may solve a problem for me. does the allthread wobble in the nuts ? or is it fairly stable ? this would be great for me, if it were fairly stable.

[msar24]

There are 3 nuts on the all thread. The bottom one is welded to the pipe and the top one is welded to the top plate where the vice rests. The third nut is tightened (with a big wrench) against the bottom nut and there is no wobble. I have the finer adjustment by using the all thread and course adjustment by using the bolt on the side of the verticle pipe. I can also loosen another bolt on the horizontal pipe and adjust the entire setup closer or farther from the table top. The microscope is bolted to the top of the table.

[msar24]

The bench works well but the Air Conditioner (in the background) is by far my favorite piece of equipment. It hit 107F (41C) today.

[monk]

kevin: thanx a bunch. i had considered a drill press, but would be less convenient for me. seing as how you use 1 nut as a jam nut, this is the way i will proceed. thanks again.

[leschowe]

I am relatively new to engraving and this is my first real post to this forum.
I must say, that this is a great web site for a budding engraver. I have learned
quite a bit here and I really appreciate Sam making this websit available to the
engraving community.

Anyway, getting on to the the topic of this post:
I built this workbench after I came home from the Basic Engraving class which I
attended at GRS in June. The bench measures 33 inches high and has a working
surface of about 4X4 feet. It seems to work quite well and it is very sturdy.
The base is a "leg system" which I purchased from Grizzly Industrial
(Model: H5741) and the top is a 4 by 4 foot piece of high grade 3/4 inch
plywood (I had Home Depot cut a 4X8 sheet of plywood exactly in half before I
left the store). I cut the front corner of the plywood off to form the working
front edge and then routed the resulting three front edges with a "quarter round"
bit. Except for painting the plywood top, screwing the top to the "leg system"
and drilling a few holes for tubes and handpiece holders, that is about it.

I should note that this is a very versatile bench in that you can cut the plywood
in any shape necessary to fit your available space. I needed my bench to fit into
an available corner of my office so that is why I cut the plywood as I did.
You could just as easily design the bench to work off one of the sides of the
plywood if that shape would fit better.

Les Schowe