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Welcome to the first in a series of collaborative project videos between the Wood Whisperer and finewoodworking.com. Now, I am your host Marc Spagnolo and as a contributing for finewoodworking.com, I not only have the opportunity to produce some great videos but would also provide you with a whole multimedia experience including text write ups, detailed photographs and downloadable plans. Now, for a detailed write up and downloadable plan for this project, check out finewoodworking.com/thewoodwhisperer.
For today’s project, we are going to revamp one of the most important tools the shop, the assembly table. Now, as fine furniture makers, we will always need flat and sure services to reference of. For instance, your table softens, your joiner bed and these all of you hand plainer are just a few of the many items in our shops that we rely on, on a daily basis as perfect reference surfaces. And even with perfectly milled pieces, our projects can still come out lopsided and crooked if we assemble them on a surface that is imperfectly flat.
Now, a dead flat assembly table would not only improve the quality of your work but it will also make your woodworking high of much less stressful when it comes to time complex glue ups. Now, just about anything conserve as an assembly table, something is simple as a piece of plywood and some sole horses certainly will get the job done. But how do we know that that surface is flat and leveled? And even if it is, how do we keep it that way?
Now, we addressed these concerns by building what is known as a torsion box. A torsion box is just a simple grid work, kind of like a honey cone with a skin on each side. Now, this type of design results in an incredibly strong surface that is resistant to bending and warping and can be found on things like airplanes and doors where structural integrity is essential.
Now, here is a little mark up that I made out of cordage plywood and you could see basically the inter grid work and I missed the little piece here but there is an inter grid work and two skins. And when you put this together, this is exceptionally strong and basically will not bend under normal usage. Now, I recommend using MDF for your assembly table. MDF stands for Medium Density Fiberboard, it is an engineered product that is very stable, it has not predisposition for movement and it is uniform from sheet to sheet. Oh yeah, it is cheap too.
Now, you could probably get away with using plywood or a kind dried hardwood for this project but I find that MDF’s uniformed density makes it the perfect material for project like this. Now, we are going to be working with a lot of MDF today so we need to take a few precautions.
Now, you should always wear minimally a dusk mask or better yet a respirator like this one when you are creating dust in your shop. And since MDF is primarily made up of wood fibers, wax and resin, its dust can be particularly harmful. Also, MDF does this very light and it tends to get everywhere. It also has a tendency to make the floor pretty darn slippery.
Now, let me give you a tour of my old assembly table and show you some of the features that I like and some areas where we can use some improvement. Now, I am sure many of you will recognize my old assembly table as being David Marks design and I certainly modeled mine after his. It is a simple 4 foot x 4 foot torsion box with some maple on the ends for extra durability. And, the problem that I had with this type of table is that the top really gets beat up over the years. Whether it is a dried glue, screw holes, spilled finish, they are all basically the culprits. Now the top after being refinished in number of times has some peaks and valleys and that that sort of defeat the purpose of an assembly table like this.
So, that is one of things I want to tackle in the design of our new table is how to get a top that we can actually replace overtime and not have to worry about refinishing. Now, one major area for improvement is the base of the assembly table. My original design was juts pretty basic, I just wanted to hold the top in place and have some extra storage room. And, it worked for a while but as I accumulated things and try to make it more and more functional, I started to realize it was just kind of a trap from miscellaneous garbage so I got anyway a compressor under here, I got a retractable air hose, I even got this little brown paper roll that you could pull the paper over the top of the table to protect the surface. And, on the outsides I got some pegboard so it is kind of nice but I think we do it a lot better.
For instance, one major thing that is a real pain is every time I want to do something that requires power I need to run an extension cord from one of the walls. It would be great if I could run a peering extension cord under the flooring or in one of the cracks in the concrete and have some power strips along each side. And, I actually have easily accessible power on all sides at all times. Maybe one of the biggest things that I am going to do as a change is instead of just a big, wide open space underneath, what I would like to do is make some really good usable storage. So, I am talking full extension drawers some doors basically cabinets underneath the assembly table and I am thinking about splitting in half so that I actually have, you know, cabinets facing each side. So, it will a lot of work but I really think it is going to be worthy and it is going to help keep the shop much organized. And now, it is time to take apart the old table, post the power.
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