Lathe Bench

My lathe bench is in it's second iteration. The first was made with random pieces of steel welded together poorly with a cheap arc welder. 

The second iteration (/attempt) is made primarily from welded 50x50x3mm steel Rolled Hollow Section (RHS) and is on heavy duty castor wheels. It also doubles as storage space for raw materials. 

(Note, the pedestal where the lathe sits does not match the lathe. This is because I upgraded the previous lathe to a Hare and Forbes AL-250G, which is a vastly superior machine, but unfortunately with slightly different feet spacing.)

As an increasing assortment of stock accumulates, I needed a better way to organise it, so I could actually find what I needed. The original design had two drawers for storing lathe accessories, and two shelves for storing stock. I have cleared out the lower shelf in the photo below. This area will be replaced with four drawers. This area was chosen as it has more space than the upper shelf, and allows the drawers to be of identical size to the top ones.

The shelf frame will be made from 8020 aluminium extrusion. The versatility of this stuff is amazing - it is like an engineer's play-kit. The extrusion is fairly dear, and the fasteners dearer yet, so I am always on the look out for salvageable scrap. 

Lengths were cut and the ends machined according to the fasteners required.  

8 x 500mm drawer slides were used. These are the same as used in the upper drawers, and in my Electronics Bench. These were easily bolted onto the T-slot extrusion with T-nuts (which is orders of magnitude easier than precisely tapping holes on a welded steel structure). Here is the test fit-up. The little protrusion on the front allows the centre of cross-piece to rest on the steel frame to prevent sagging.

All the stock required was cut from a half sheet of plywood (1200x1200mm). Luckily, the dimensions worked out very nicely, as there was very little wastage (the amount shown in the foreground below). The base of the drawers were made with scrap plywood.

Drawers were made using a combination of PVA glue, and screws. I used a similar method for gluing the 90 degree joints as with the Cajon. I used 2 drills, one to make the pilot hole (to prevent the plywood from cracking), one to drill to make the countersink, and the impact driver to put the screw in.

This is not kosher, but a ruler is a really good tool for scraping glue out of corners! 

It still took a while, but I was left with 4 drawer carcasses.

The bases were lined with a fabric coated vinyl material, which was stapled into place.

Before:

After. (The coat of polyurethane varnish can also be seen). 

The aluminium frame and drawers were installed into the lathe bench. If I had to do this again, I would have been more generous with my clearances, as it was difficult getting everything to fit correctly.

 The draw fronts were made with composite material. It has 2 film-coated layers of aluminium around a polymer core. This stuff provides a clean finish, is lightweight, and can be ripped on the tablesaw like plywood.

Still to come: 

• Attaching fascia and handles 
• Tidying up stock 
• Finished project