Building a welding table

[Inkblot]

Apologies if this is not the best forum for this, but it is in support of my 911 restoration

So, a while back, I started welding, and quickly outgrew the crappy folding Harbor Freight table I had been using. Fast forward a number of months, and I had the opportunity to move my 911 stuff from my crowded garage into a well-equipped shared shop space. Seemed like a perfect time to build a legit welding table.

There are many, many examples on YouTube, and I combed through most of them trying to borrow ideas from each that would best fit my needs. I wanted something fairly basic, easy to build, and that I could modify and add to as my skills develop. Also, I don't have big truck or van, so the materials would all have to fit in my daily driver.

I think most pro tables use a single, thick steel slab as the table top- which makes sense, as you want something super-solid to work on, and something that will stay flat and resist warpage when you weld on it. There was just no way I'd be able to transport a slab like that, or even if I could, I'd never be able to manage moving it around, positioning it for the build, etc.

I quickly settled on a slatted table top design, which would allow me to more easily deal the materials and transport, while still (hopefully) maintaining enough material thickness to resist warpage. Also, spacing the slats creates an easy and flexible clamping platform.

After a few hours with SketchUp, I settled on this design:





A little more SketchUp work and I've got my cut sheet:





Next, I'm off to the the steel yard, where I'll figure out exactly which material to use for the slats.

[tperazzo]

Looks good to me! What thickness are the upper slats?

My table is 5/16" thick and its plenty strong enough for light duty garage type stuff.

Make sure the table surface hangs over the frame a little bit so you can clamp stuff to it.

Mount steerable wheels on one side only so if you do clamp a vice on there its less likely to wander if you clamp it to the fixed wheel side. Locking wheels would be nice too.

Add a little bracket to hold the gun/torch too.

Have fun, I like your drawing.

[Bill Douglas]

I don't know what this 5/16th stuff means but my 3mm tabletop is robust enough for any job I could do. Plus it's quite light.

Being a solid top there no no chance of molten metal falling on my boots.

[Inkblot]

I took a trip to Alan Steel in Redwood City to figure out which steel stock to use. I've been going there since my teens; they've got a great selection, and a ton of random old surplus stuff. When I don't know exactly what I need, sometimes seeing all of the possible options there helps me mentally piece the whole thing together. If you live in the in the SF Bay Area, it's definitely worth a trip, at least once...

However, if you haven't heard, living here is really f'ing expensive. And businesses like Alan Steel must be having a hard time staying in business... this is a clumsy way of saying (defending?) that their prices are really, really high now. I was expecting to throw down about $300 for material (a totally uneducated guess), but once I had everything I needed the tab was to be well over $600. That stung. I had selected 5/8" thick slats, and decided to bring the cost down a little by downsizing to 1/2". I saved a little more by reducing the number of cuts I had them do, but still... Like most DIY projects, I was hoping for a fair balance between saving some money (over just buying a pre-made table) and learning something. it was becoming painfully clear to me that this project was now squarely in the learning experience category.

With my budget blown, I got everything loaded up.




My original design was to have the slats screwed down from above, which seemed like the simplest approach. I thought I'd have enough wall-thickness in my tube stock to tap threads for the screws to bite into:




I went with thinner walled tube, as a part of my cost savings, which ruled out tapping the tube directly. Also, I never really liked the idea of countersinking the screw heads in the slats to keep them flush. I decided to invert the approach; that is, drill "blind" holes into the underside of the slats, tap them, and screw upwards through the bottom of the supporting tube stock:




This approach allowed me to use shorter screws (saving a few $), while keeping the top side of the slats hole-free. Assembly would be a bit trickier, as I'd now need to get things aligned upside-down, and I'd need to drill extra, larger "access" holes in the tube stock.

My design called for 3 supporting trusses, 10 slats, and 2 screws per slat per truss. That's 60 holes to drill and tap in the slats, which was slow going...

More pics coming.

[Bill Douglas]

It is impressive. But if you want to keep the costs and labor down...

I bought an old table from the dumpshop. Probably $5. It's one of those horrible tables that they bring out when someone is leaving and they cover it in revolting cakes and

Then I got the 3mm sheet of bright mild steel off our version of ebay. Probably $20 but should have only paid $10, then dumped that on top. Quite good.

[ClickClickBoom]

I have a solid top welding/fab table 3’ X 4’. Decided that a more modern approach would be nice for hold down and options. Got these off of eBay, they are CNC laser cut and are impressive.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/CertiFlat-FB4848-4X4-FabBlock-DIY-Modular-Welding-Table-Top-Kit-Heavy-Duty/332319077263?hash=item4d5fc2b38f:g:stoAAOSwjyxZd5O X

I also got a leg kit as well, the entire package came shipped on a pallet, delivered to my shop door. While my price was 25% cheaper, the cost of steel has skyrocketed. The Chinese went to the rustbelt and bought all our sidelined steel manufacturing equipment and went into business.
My steel supplier said that almost every future ton of scrap steel in the US is owned by the Chinese iron industry.
They are experiencing the same growing pains that we went through in the early 1900s.
I like the holes because there are tons of different hold down options. My solid table requires using the edges and “c” clamps, severely limiting clamping possibilities.
Check out the Magtab series of magnetic hold down fixtures.
Weldmonger on YouTube has amazing series of videos, no shortage of subjects to nerd out on;
https://www.youtube.com/user/weldingtipsandtricks

https://youtu.be/VMkfNHZaIWg

If you are Warren Buffett:
http://siegmundtables.com

[Cory M]

It's a welding table, so why use screws at all? Just weld the table top to the supporting structure from the bottom, it will be a lot easier and faster than screwing it together. It's a good idea to put a couple of crossbars on the sides so you have a place to hang your clamps and vise grips. You should weld on a tab to attach the ground underneath the table too so it doesn't get in your way. Put wheels on it for sure. Make sure the height is sufficient for you to sit on a stool in your preferred seating position so you don't have to bend your back too much over the table.

[Inkblot]

All great suggestions- thanks for the feedback!

Part of my goal was to build something from the ground-up; I figured it'd be good welding practice as well. I've got a number of projects waiting on my 911 which will require some cutting and welding, and I'm trying to build up my confidence a bit before I take them on

@tperazzo Thanks, Tom. I've got a long way to go to get to your level, but hopefully this will be a step in the right direction! I don't have any tig experience, but I've been inspired by some of your videos to give it a try. That was actually one of my main motivations for this project- to create a comfortable space where I could more easily mess around with some small tig projects. I was even originally thinking that I should just tig this whole table together as a way to learn- but then decided I really needed to get it done more quickly (and with more confidence).

@bill My table top size is roughly 3' by 6'. Even at 3mm thick, a solid top would be quite difficult for me to manage. I do appreciate your point about falling molten metal!

@Boom Thanks for the suggestions- I did check out the CertiFlat stuff, which looks really nice. That's also part of what I used as the mental model for how much things might cost; I figured as long as I built something for less $ (at a comparable size) than that, then I was doing ok. Mine would not be anywhere as nice, but I'd chalk that up to the value of the learning experience.

@Cory Great question- why use screws at all? Believe me, after going through all of the drilling, tapping, assembly I was really questioning that decision as well! My main reasoning was that, due to lack of experience, I wasn't really sure how big of a deal warpage would be. If one of the slats were to warp, I liked the idea that I could just unscrew it, and either move it to a less critical part of the table, or perhaps replace the individual slat altogether. Also, I like the idea that if I ever needed to weld something big in an upright position, I could remove a couple of slats from the middle of the table to position the workpiece. I'm really happy with how it turned out (many more pics to come), but only time will tell if the extra work to use screws was really worth it.


-Jake

[Inkblot]

Here's my triumphant (by triumphant I mean still in a bit of sticker-shock...) return from Alan Steel. That's somewhere around 400lbs of steel, and I was happy that I got it all to fit in one trip. I saved a few $ by not having the yard do all of my cuts; I had them cut the tube into 6' lengths; any longer and I wouldn't get them into my car. I kept the cutoffs, which you can see on top. I did have them cut all of the slats to length. I have a small metal bandsaw which is perfect for cutting down the tube, but the slats would be too much for it. Plus, at the yard, they can cut through this stuff with ease.




Here's my basic setup for drilling the blind holes in the slats. Each slat is about 35lbs; doesn't sound like much, but it really adds up when you're manhandling these things around!




I knew that alignment of the threaded holes in the slats with the through-holes in my tube trusses would be an issue. If I wasn't careful, I'd have big tolerance stack-up issues. I came up with a workable jig setup to get the hole spacing consistent, and which I could use as a reference later when I drilled the trusses.




This is slow going work, for sure. I tried to progress carefully, with plenty of cutting fluid and patience.




I broke my original bottom-tap pretty early on, then went to a proper machine shop supply store (Dan-Mar, in San Carlos) and picked up a flat-bottom "Turbo Cut" tap, which worked like a champ.




Side note: Go to Dan-Mar if your ever in the area and need machine shop stuff. It's another one of those old-school shops of the kind that seems to be disappearing too quickly around here. They are super friendly and knowledgable, and they really took the time to try to understand what I was trying to accomplish, and what I needed for the job.


-Jake

[Inkblot]

After finally finishing the drilling and tapping of the slats, I moved on to the trusses. My plan was to make a jig to drill all of the screw holes, then flip the truss over, and use a larger bit to drill the "access" holes.

Here's the simple jig I came up with for the screw holes. It's basically the same ideal as a shelf-pin jig, as you might find in woodworking. The idea is that you drill your first hole, then drop the jig's pin (the machine screw in the pic) into that first hole to locate the next 2 holes. Then rinse/repeat all the way down the length of the truss, keeping the spacings consistent, and thus hopefully well-aligned with the tapped holes in the slats.




I knew my alignment wouldn't be perfect, so I did drill the screw holes to be about 1/16" oversized. I'll use washers under the screw heads, so a little slop in there should be ok.







Next I flipped the trusses over to drill the access holes. These holes need to be large enough for me to pass the screw and washer through to the screw hole on the other side. They don't have to be perfectly aligned, so for this I just used visual markings to get the spacings right; this let me go a little faster for this part of the job.




-Jake

[Inkblot]

So the plan from here was to start assembling the slats onto the trusses, to make sure everything lined up ok, and to then "lock in" the truss spacing before welding could begin.

For this stage of the assembly, everything would need to be upside-down, with the table top against the ground. I put some lengths of tubing down first, to make sliding the slats around a bit easier. I then laid everything out, and tried to get things relatively aligned.





Everything looked pretty good, but I underestimated what a PITA it would be to get my screws and washers down through the larger access holes and into the aligned tapped hole of the slat. Remember, I'm working downward here- the screw wants to fall off of my bit in this orientation. At first I tried a magnetic hex head tip, but the screw and washer kept falling off and getting lost inside the truss. Then I got smart and gooped up the screw, washer, and hex key with grease. This worked well.






As I'm working down the trusses, I can feel the tolerance stack up effect- even though I thought I did a pretty good job with my spacings. The first slats were really easy to align
to the trusses, but towards the end I really needed to force things into place. A big hammer is always helpful! There were a few that just wouldn't go, so I ended up drilling out the holes in the truss a little more- which worked fine- just bruised my ego a bit




I did run into one set of holes which, no matter how hard I tried, just wouldn't seem to go. They looked sufficiently aligned, but I just couldn't get a screw started in them. Turns out I had forgotten to tap those holes- d'oh! I took me an embarrassingly long time to figure that out... anyway, I'm always happy when there's a simple solution, even if it means I'm an idiot.




Here's all the slats, successfully screwed into the 3 trusses.




Next up, I can start cutting and welding the frame- finally.

Jake

[Inkblot]

Now that the slats and trusses are looking good, I need to "lock in" the trusses by welding in some cross pieces. I've tacked them into place:






Finally welding for real! Not the best welds, but could be worse. They get better as I go...




In this pic you can see that I've tried to shim up the assembly to make it as level as possible. This will help when I start to put the table legs into place.




Tacking the leg sections:






It's starting to take shape. This is the fun part- kinda like the stage of framing a house- it feels like things are moving quickly and you're really building something.





Next up I'll figure out some feet and casters.

- Jake

[Inkblot]

I knew I wanted some combination of casters and feet, so that I could:
- Easily move the table around, either to reposition it in my workspace, or even potentially to roll it outside if desired
- Lock it into place, so that I can work against the table without it moving. In my experience locking casters help, but never really hold the table completely firm.
- Allow me to level the table, by adjusting the height at each corner.

I looked at a number of approaches online, some of which are very cool and interesting (like integrating a bottle jack to lift the table off of its feet, or threaded rod down the interior length of a leg to adjust the height easily from the table top level), but ultimately I decided on what I thought would be the simplest, most effective approach. I found some beefy bolt and nut combos at the steel yard, which I could use as adjustable feet, and I put non-locking casters (which saved some $ over the locking variety) at each end, inside of the feet. The trick would be to get the feet at the right level, such that they could easily be adjusted up and down to load/unload the casters. My bolts only have an inch or so of threads, so it helped to model it all in SketchUp to make sure I got it right:




Next I needed to make the bases for the feet. I cut down some scrap into squares and drilled holes:






Mocking it up with the actual parts:




Here I've welded the big nuts onto the bases. Structurally, I probably could have just tacked them into place and called it a day, but I wanted to try to get a decent weld all the way around. I found it to be really difficult to get a decent looking weld here. First off, it's always a little tricky when you're welding metals of different thicknesses together. You have to adjust your angle ever so slightly to favor the thicker material, and I think getting that just right only comes with a lot of experience. Normally, I'd try it out on some sacrificial scrap pieces first- but I only had 4 of these nuts, so I just had to go for it.
Second, moving around a small, round part like this makes it feel like you're always out of position. I would weld about 1/2" at a time, then reposition, which is slow and painful. I just didn't have the patience for that on all 4 of them, so there are more than a few ugly spots! I was imagining that if you had to do a lot of this sort of thing, some kind of foot-controlled "potter's wheel" to rotate your work piece around as you went would be really helpful.




Everything tacked into place:




Making sure the heights/positioning all still looks good:




..and fully welded:




Next up, some finishing touches before primer and paint.


-Jake

[Inkblot]

Now that the basic frame is done and the feet are on, I can flip the table over to be right-side up. There's no way I could do this with the slats on, so I unscrewed all of them. I numbered the slats, so that whenever I put them back on, they'll be in the same location- just trying to avoid any alignment issues with the screw holes.




Here I'm reinforcing the welding of the trusses to the frame. My welds are looking a bit better- but every once in a while I really dog one of them up, usually cuz I'm being impatient and I don't want to reset my position. With the right amount of grinding and paint, nobody will ever know




I added some round tube around the perimeter, thinking that I'd be able to hang my clamps, grinders, whatever. Also welded down some sheet for the bottom shelf.






I also added a couple of "accessory tubes", so that I would have options on where to mount a vise, or other future tools.




Next up, primer and paint, a few more accessories, and final assembly.


-Jake

[Bill Douglas]

The design and build looks GREAT. Those welds are nice. I like the idea of it being on casters.

Edit: How high is the bench hight?

[Inkblot]

Next I hit the frame with some self-etching primer:




and rattle-can charcoal color:




Mounting the casters:




Re-assembling the slats, hopefully for the last time:




Lookin' pretty good!




Next, I wanted to build a stand for my vise. I had bought a length of square tube sized to slide nicely into the 2" square tube I used for the frame- this would allow me to relocate my vise to any of the open ends of the frame, or either of the 2 "accessory tubes". I butt-welded two scrap cutoffs to make a square plate for the vise, which I then welded to the smaller square tube. It was fun to be actually welding on my welding table for the first time




I assumed that my vice would be at the right end most of the time, so I drilled a hole, welded a captive nut to the frame, and welded a wing nut to a bolt to fashion a clamp/lock for the vice stand. It would have been better to do this before paint, cuz now I had to clean up and respray the area. I'll probably add more of these to the other open tubes, eventually.



It'll work




Next up, the finished table.



- Jake

[Inkblot]

The round tube I added around the perimeter worked great for clamps, but it was too fat to hang any of my cheap grinders on. I welded in some scrap angle stock on the right side, which worked perfectly:






That's it- all done!






So far, it's been a really great workspace- and while I'm sure I'll modify it in the future as my needs and skills change, this table ought to last a really long time!

I'd be happy to share my SketchUp files, if anyone wants to have a go at something similar.


Thanks for following my post-


Jake

[timmy2]

In a word... Nice

[Inkblot]

The design and build looks GREAT. Those welds are nice. I like the idea of it being on casters.

Edit: How high is the bench hight?

@Bill, thanks! I made the table fairly high, at 39". I'm on the tall side, and it feels like a good height for working both from standing or sitting on my lab stool.

- Jake

[ClickClickBoom]

The slippery slope has come into view! If you are gonna do any metal fab work you will need either a Cold Saw, or one of these:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Makita-LC1230-Metal-Cutting-Saw-Dry-Cut/372651749417?epid=918426616&hash=item56c3c67029:g:jNsAAOSwpztcslhp
This saw is amazing, when I stopped working at the fab shop, I really missed the Haberle Cold saw.
Since my shop is a much smaller scale process, I got the Makita Dry Saw when they first came out, still would like the Cold Saw, but for the space and efficiency this saw will save tons of edge cleaning and cuts with amazing precision, leaving an almost machined surface. My abrasive saw and band saw are for a few select materials like rebar and aluminum. The best part of the Makita is a fast cut, with almost no sparks. The blades aren't cheap, but I buy them on eBay when someone clears out stock. One blade lasts about a year of my normal fabrication needs, unless I cut Titanium, then they become dangerous frisbees. You just missed 2 Makita Dry Cuts on craigslist, and I almost bought them because they were so cheap.
I had been lusting after a welding positioner, but the price was off the table. I found this one on eBay, price was very reasonable:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Aircrafter-Model-3-MK-Products-Weld-Hold-Positioner/293022884847?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhsJvoEqZvI

Evolution:
http://www.mkprod.com/pt-positioners-T-250.htm