Built a deck for my lathe

[jgroom]

Hi all!  As part of my shop rebuild I've been trying to fix some of the little annoyances in my machining stations.  First up is the lathe.  Several years ago I found an old Craftsman workbench a local college was 'retiring'.  It has a 6' x 2' solid wood top and eight drawers, perfect for my little 9" South Bend.  Well, almost.  I moved the tilting backdrive as close to the lathe as I could but it still hung over the back by about 7" when engaged.  Not a big deal, it just meant a gap between the table and the wall.  After recently acquiring a 5c collet chuck and a set of collets I needed a place to put the collet rack, so.....

Out comes the 'nasty brown stuff' in the form of a couple 2x4s, cut off 6', use the other 2' for bracing and tada..









A new deck, suitable for BBQ's or collet rack 

Jeff

[chuck foster]

nice little lathe you have there  ......................i'm a southbender too 

chuck 

[bogstandard]

Nice bit of gained space there Jeff.

Those of us with small shops can really benefit by doing little jobs like that. I see a lot of spare vertical benchspace there, I hope you are going to make max use of it during your rebuild.

Now is the time for you to plan where everything is going, and if you do it right, it will make your shop much easier to work in.

Bogs