On shop furniture
I made a drill press stand last night, but I wasn’t happy with it at all. It was two 1/2’’ pieces of plywood sandwiched and glued together, that I then screwed casters onto. I looked at what I needed to make and I looked around the shop at what I had, and made something far too quickly.
Issues:
I didn’t have bolts long enough to actually attach the base to that night. Which is a good thing, because it made me pause
The casters are 4’’ tall. While they’re heavy duty locking casters, drill presses are heavy and this should sit as low to the ground as possible in use. These also don’t retract at all, a feature I love on my workbench
An old friend, who manages the shop at my high school now, pointed out that I used the track on my Festool saw backwards when I made it. Not that there was anything dangerous or wrong with using it this way, but it’s inherently less stable, and doesn’t take advantage of the plastic strip along the proper edge to make a better edge. Embarrassing, and how you learn, but I know now it could be better and just as easy
Every though there’s probably nothing wrong with it, I thought the rough, up square edge of the two pieces of CDX plywood screwed together looked ugly. I went and bought a piece of proper 3/4’’ birch plywood. It should be stronger or at least as strong, plus it will look nicer in the shop and take a finish better
I bought a ‘mobile base set’ which is really casters with a low-riding mount to them. I’ll remove these old casters and use them for something like an outfeed table - something where they’ll hold up a wood frame weighted more properly for their design.
Setting up a shop is interesting. The devil is always in the details. As I have machines rolling in, I’m needing to put them together relatively quickly so that I have space for them all. But I also think that this space should be a beautiful, creative space- one that’s as easy on the eyes as it is on the hands and feet. So I’ll start again soon
