After years of making do, welding on concrete slabs or steel sawhorses or toting whole projects to someone else’s shop, I decided to build a solid, adaptable welding table of my own. I would LOVE to have a big Baileigh welding jig table, but I don’t have pockets that deep for something that doesn’t support my primary profession. I would have loved a Certiflat table and that was the plan – until I spent the money I had saved for that on an X-Carve upgrade…
I had rolled a couple designs of my own around in my head for years and while at a salvage yard looking for a specific steel, I found a very old and very tired work table with a steel frame, steel castors on one end, and wooden top that needed burning. I paused. I had to do something with 4-5 welding projects at home looming. I decided then and there that I could work with the pile of awkward wood and steel and parted with $25 to take it home. I called Specialty Metals in Kent, WA the next day about sheet steel pricing. I phoned them up at exactly the right time: They had a remnant piece of .5” steel from a larger job on super sale that was almost perfect. They agreed to the steel, to make the two needed cuts, and to plasma cut the holes in the top I wanted for pennies shy of $100. A smoking deal! I sketched it all up, sent it over to them, and a couple of weeks later, it was done. I hauled it home that day… Where it sat taking up space in my garage for 11 months while I healed from knee surgery.
I now have the top welded to the base and have used it for a bee hive stand project already. I will add some additional bells and whistles as I have time this summer and fall as I work on other welding projects.