One goal for this year is to get all my heavy shop equipment on wheels, because we hope to move to an airport community eventually. I have two lathes. The big one is already mobile, but the faithful Smithy has been on an old wooden bench for the last 25 years.
Before his own retirement, my friend Bill ran a metals scrapyard. We have Maxwell-Gunter here. The government throws away all kinds of neat stuff, some of which would show up at the yard....in this case, two huge (24 x 30 x12) aluminum drawers on nice ball bearing slides. So, a long delayed project...a roll around bench for the lathe, with drawers to store away all the tooling.
Call it old school homebuilder disease, but a bargain tickles my snarfels, if you know what I mean. I was walking through Home Depot, and noticed a 46" roll around box which had gotten dropped off a truck or something. Although bent up, all the drawers worked just fine. Mr. Manager sir, would you like to hear an offer? Took it home, stripped it down to just case and drawers, and hammered out some damaged sheet metal.
Drew up a steel tube frame, mostly 2" 16ga square, a fast, easy format to fabricate. Goal was stiffness, but it wasn't possible to use diagonals, so a doubled tube run across the bottom, and cross members in the top to support the lathe. As my buddy David says, if it's stiff enough, it will probably be strong enough. Needs to be, because when loaded with lathe, lathe accessories, and tooling, it's gonna weigh a lot.
About a week, part time. Wrapped it up yesterday. Today I'm off to the airport to retrieve my engine crane, so I can transfer the lathe. Let's hope I don't need to build another tug to move it around the shop
.
Before his own retirement, my friend Bill ran a metals scrapyard. We have Maxwell-Gunter here. The government throws away all kinds of neat stuff, some of which would show up at the yard....in this case, two huge (24 x 30 x12) aluminum drawers on nice ball bearing slides. So, a long delayed project...a roll around bench for the lathe, with drawers to store away all the tooling.
Call it old school homebuilder disease, but a bargain tickles my snarfels, if you know what I mean. I was walking through Home Depot, and noticed a 46" roll around box which had gotten dropped off a truck or something. Although bent up, all the drawers worked just fine. Mr. Manager sir, would you like to hear an offer? Took it home, stripped it down to just case and drawers, and hammered out some damaged sheet metal.
Drew up a steel tube frame, mostly 2" 16ga square, a fast, easy format to fabricate. Goal was stiffness, but it wasn't possible to use diagonals, so a doubled tube run across the bottom, and cross members in the top to support the lathe. As my buddy David says, if it's stiff enough, it will probably be strong enough. Needs to be, because when loaded with lathe, lathe accessories, and tooling, it's gonna weigh a lot.
About a week, part time. Wrapped it up yesterday. Today I'm off to the airport to retrieve my engine crane, so I can transfer the lathe. Let's hope I don't need to build another tug to move it around the shop
.