Another shop project, rolling work table ...

Geezer Garage

Geezer Garage

Senior Member
Location
Steamboat Springs CO
Have a serious lack of flat surfaces in the shop. As most garage monkeys will tell you, any flat surface almost instantly attracts things until completely covered. This project started with a pair of 100 year old cast iron wheels that had been collecting dust in the garage loft for 40 years. Very cool looking, but out of round in nearly every direction. Chucked them up in the lathe, and trued up the rolling surfaces, and the edges. then moved them to the milling machine and re-bored the axle holes back to true. Next I found some round stock and turned a pair of axles for them to run on. The table itself is entirely built from found materials, with the exception of a few pieces of steel that were part of 10 tons of steel I bought for almost nothing from someone who was moving and needed it gone. the main frame is one of three that came with the house next door when we bought it. I believe they came from the local power plant when it was being built. They were just thrown together, and covered with expanded metal on the top and two sides. Probably 80% of the work on this was removing paint and mill scale. The bench top is 24"x 8' and is 3/8" hot rolled steel plate welded to 1"x3" rectangular tubing. The top was very rusted an under the rust I encountered the hardest mill scale I've ever come across. Tried sanding discs, muratic acid, to no avail, and finally settled on 40 grit flap wheels on a 4 1/2" angle grinder to break through it. I probably should have just remove the rust and left it, but my ocd had already kicked in. Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of as the table turns.

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In all transparency, I actually finished this project a few weeks ago, but not wanting to bore everyone with a long post, and limiting my time on the computer I'm posting this up in easily written, and consumed sections. As seen in some of the earlier posts I boxed in the lower sections of table legs with 2"angle iron for strength to mount the solid wheels and axles, along with the front casters, which were disassembled, cleaned greased and put in the hydraulic press to take out the play in the rotating bearing assembly, and then welded to the legs. Along with the swivel castors I added a leveling leg that was sourced from the same pool cover cart that I found for free on FB market place. This leg takes the load off the casters to keep the table from moving. The original frame structure was stripped of two coats of paint, and mill scale, reinforced and welded in critical areas, and treated with cold gun bluing solution, rinsed/neutralized, and ultimately coated with a clear, high temp engine coating. The first pic is the table top in it's original condition, and later after removing the majority of the mill scale, which took two solid eight hour days. After welding the table top to the frame I welded 3" channel steel to both ends, and the length of one side along with an inverted piece to form a tray on the other long side, extending the top from 24" x 8' to 30" x 8'6". Then the welds were ground level to the table top, and the top was belt sanded with two different grits to smooth the surface. More soon, and thanks for following along.



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Made a removable 3" surround to go on three sides of the bench which is held on by 1x1/8th" tabs. This way if I have something longer than the 8' 6" top to work on I can just remove them, but my guess is the y will stay on most of the time. Got the vice mounted, and then started on the drawers, which were another freebee. Had to do a fair amount of slice, and dice to separate the three drawers that were originally a three drawer file cabinet. Fabricated a lot of different mounting brackets to get them hung under the table, but they came out nice, and open , and close smoothly. Prepped, and painted the drawer fronts and surrounding cabinet sections, and then welded everything in place. Moved on to welding in supports for the bottom shelf which is a piece of 5/8 USB for now, until I find the proper piece of steel to replace it, or I may end up making it a lattice work of 2"x3/16" flat strap steel, kind of like an old castle portcullis. One last installment coming up on this project , then on to something new. Thanks for following along.

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