Thread: WIP - the new assembly table

I got inspired by a you tube video about the Polk workbench. I have no need for a superlight easily transported work table, but for many years I have made do with these two tables I knocked up out of some left over floorboards from when I built a loft in the barn for SWMBO to have a sewing and felting workshop.

asseblytable 1.jpg That's what I started out with, and what the first stages were built on. I have a bunch of cover-sheets sitting around in the garage, from when a cabinet making friend used my workshop for a few years, and he left them behind. So that's what I was going to use for the top of the new bench. And I was going to make it a stressed panel, so it will stay nice and flat. Went to some lengths to get everything nice and straight before I began to rout slots for the biscuits.

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Never enough clamps!
asseblytable 6.jpg the long members are already laid out here, the 32mm holes will later accomodate some lengths of pipe for the router table attachment to sit on.

asseblytable 7.jpgasseblytable 8.jpg the long members are all attached with biscuits, but the short bits I decided to just glue and screw. some fancy clamping going on there ...

No picture of my spreading glue all over everything, and screwing the bottom sheet on. Well, everybody can figure that out. Let's just say I had help from a chalkline.

asseblytable 9.jpgasseblytable 10.jpg It's done! Pity about the one gnawed corner, but some damage will happen eventually anyway. That's what you get for being a cheapskate. Of course, I then immediately had to go and put more holes into it, ha! Used the router for straight-boring them. I have a couple of rail-clamps that will slide into those holes and hold things down tight on the table. pva does not stick to the surface well and can easily be lifted off with a sharp chisel, already tested that a fair few times. On to the carcass!

asseblytable 11.jpgasseblytable 12.jpgasseblytable 13.jpg the subframe is a square from 2x2 and 4x2, lap joints, screwed and glued. Had to use the 4x2 because of the size of the baseplates of the castors. A central divider, and, yes, I had another half sheet of left over flooring. That stuff is heavy as lead, but very very hard, and that half sheet would keep the thing nice and square. A second level went in over the top of that, and you can see the central divider there has a huge cutout so I can shove my sash clamps in there when I'm in a hurry to get them off the top during a glue-up. First electrical bits went in, 3x4 powerpoints. Before anyone wonders: I used to work as a some-time sparky in my student days to earn holiday money, I know how to wire up a plug.

asseblytable 14.jpgasseblytable 15.jpgasseblytable 16.jpg More cheap-skate stuff: making drawers out of Carbatec packing crates. I wonder what that plywood is - pretty sure it's not pine, the grain is much too fine. You can see how I mark the bottom and sides with chalk, depending on the direction of the cut: arrow means in from the edge, circle and dot means in from the face. So easy to make a dumb mistake otherwise.

And here it is, in (almost) all its beauty. the top drawer wasn't done yet, and there's a shelf in the hollow by the black power points, for chargers etc. by now. I still haven't gotten around to the drawer fronts.

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But the top drawer is finished, and so is the router table. I used the filter bag hanger from the Jet dusty on the side of this bench for suspending the vacuum hose, since I have a canister sitting on the big dusty.

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I might add here that all three power-strips get their juice delivered through the Big Red Button electromagnetic switch. Better safe than sorry, I was quite happy to shell out for that. And nothing will come back on
should we have a power-cut and the power comes back up (a frequent occurrence, I am sorry to say).

That's all folks!