Hey folks
I have some extra 3/4” HR steel plate kicking around. I was thinking to cut it into pieces maybe 12 x 36” and have them blanchard ground to make some low cost alignment tables. I conveniently also have a bunch of 4140 HT round stock for making the bb holders.
Any thoughts on features I should include? Or things to avoid? Even saying that the Bringheli fixture is affordable enough there’s not much use in this exercise is welcome feedback.
Comments welcome, bring it on!
I’ve always been interested in doing something like Paul Brodie’s table, which it sounds like you have the materials for. I think 3/4 is just thick enough to have ground.
You could easily cut it up to make a box with 100mm deep sides then have the top ground and call it good. Just make sure it sits on a level base. Use parafin oil to seal.
I would be interested if you made these
Welcome to the forum Maxs. Where do you live?
Thanks Jacques. I am in Tucson Az
I think the BB holder would be good plus an option of a threaded hole if you already have one.
I know it might sound weird but a hole or something to hang it on the wall. In a small shop space is a premium.
I might be interested in one. I’m in CT and always looking for an excuse to get a Schwartz smoked meat sandwich.
I use a similar sized Bridgeport mill table as my alignment surface.
I would make sure to add two decent sized (at least 1/2”) holes for holding down a V-block at one end for doing fork alignment. It would be ideal to include the fork block with it. Make sure that it is tall enough to fit tooling under the dropouts, mine is a bit short and I have to stack a spacer under it.
12x48 would be preferred over 12x36 if possible, that would allow someone to use the headtube as datum and check out to the dropouts without having to rotate the frame.
Somehow I’ve never taken a photo when aligning a fork on this fixture, but I’ve included a couple of photos.
It looks like a 12x48x0.75” chunk of steel will weigh 122lbs, so shipping might be tricky. Users will also probably need a way to clamp down the ends if they are doing any leveraging against it during alignment. I do use my table this way and when really working hard it will try to pry the table up off of it’s stand.
