Portable Workbench Build Process

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Not much of any interest to report this afternoon. Most of the time was spent finishing all the bits that make up the other two lock pieces for the vice mechanisms: I didn't bother with photos as they look the same as the ones I made for the first lock piece. They're all made now and will be welded together tomorrow all being well.

While I was in batch production mode, I also made the front and back plates for the vice mechanism bodies. I fitted a stop on the vice, fitted the first plate and used an edge finder to zero the DRO. The position of the holes is critical relative to each other, but not that critical relative to the sides, so a stop on the vice is easily good enough for repeatability.

Then for each plate I spotted the holes with a spot drill:

Then drilled out the holes; three of them look like this:

Two of them look like this:

One of them looks like this:

That's it for now. I'll need to clean the mill scale off all the body parts before I weld them, but otherwise it should all come together fairly quickly tomorrow hopefully.

Then I've just got a bucket load of turned parts to make, but that's my favourite type of metalwork, so I'm not complaining!

I am a hobbyist metalworker and woodworker. I work as an electronic design engineer and spend most of my working days in front of a computer so I enjoy having the opportunity to use my hands and make things in my spare time. I particularly enjoy making tools as I can then use them on other projects. This website showcases some of the things I've made.

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