Assembly Table

[bradley_osu]

So I was looking at building a nice assembly table and thought I'd watch David Marks' episode on it. Holy cow... that table was perfection. My question, do I have to build a torsion box top or will 2 pieces of 3/4" mdf glued together be enough? My work table and cabinet tops are all that material and seem plenty flat, but I don't know if it's not quite flat enough.

[spankynmagic]

I too was looking into this. Decided to go the Norm route in lieu of the full blown torsion box David Marks made. Norms is a torsion box of sort, just far less involved. Its also build with flip us castors for easy moving.

I have also read elsewhere that using a hollow core door laminated between some MDF makes a pretty **** nice assembly table as well. Guess it depends how wide you want yours.

All my reading basically comes down to how strong you want it. It you plan on beating it with a dead blow hammer a lot, my reading recommends the full blow torsion box. I personally cant see me abusing an assembly that much to justify the man hours to build one.

My .02

SpankY

[drumpriest]

I have build the David Marks assembly table, it's not that tough. It a nice flat surface that has stayed that way for years. I think I spent a total of 80$ on it, and I've assembled probably 10k$ worth of furniture. I used 1/2" mdf for the innards, and 3/4 for the skins and the outside bits, then wrapped it in oak. Did it in a weekend.

I clamp stuff down on it all of the time, and it's stayed nice and flat.

[bradley_osu]

I guess I pretty much figured that the torsion box design would obviously work very well, David Marks uses it for crying out loud I'm not too worried about constructing it. I just wonder if for now it's overkill.

[drumpriest]

When I built it I was really worried about getting it right, and I'm sure that it's not super perfect, but it's still a heck of a lot better than the ply that I was using before. If you are mounting your table counter top style, and the under cabinets are nice and level, etc, they will provide the support that you would get from building an assembly table. I think the assembly table is nice because you don't have to be super picky about what it sits on, it'll stay flat and consistent regardless.

So I dunno, it's really up to you, just letting you know that for the amount of work it was for me, I feel that it was certainly worth it.

[leehljp]

Hey fellows, post some pictures of your work and especially your assembly tables. Lately, it seems picture posting has slowed down.

Pictures inspire!

[unclecritic]

My assembly table is far from picture worthy lol... its just OSB screwed to 2x4's on saw horses... not very flat

Heres another take on the David Marks one:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/...ctid1344587219

and the base:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/...ctid1344621797

[LarryG]

I too built a downsized version of David Marks' torsion box assembly table. I've posted it before, but hey, who am I to refuse Hank, so here it is again:



The dimensions are 42" x 60". This picture shows it in my old shop, which had only six feet of headroom, so I placed the top of the table about 18" AFF. My current shop has a whopping seven feet of headroom, so I've raised the table height to 21". For comparison, Marks' is somewhere around 24", as best as I can guess.

Keith already said much of what I might say. It's not that hard to build, and its main benefit is that it will stay flat with a minimum of supporting structure below. Its mass does help some when you go to beatin' and bangin' but that's not the real reason for the torsion box construction and its 4" thickness. My table will soon be four years old and it's as flat as the day I built it.

As to the OP's question about whether two layers of 3/4" material will be flat enough ... impossible to say. As Keith says, that will mainly be a matter of how true your supporting cabinets are, how far the top is spanning between supports, and how heavily you load it. With a torsion box, once again semi-quoting Keith, you just stick something under the two ends, level it, and you're good to go.

The NYW table is an excellent design, but Nahm uses it as a combination work table (you can't really call it a workbench) and assembly table. The top is higher off the floor, which is more convenient when cutting biscuit slots or routing roundovers or whatever. The downside is that larger projects will have you working up over your head, where it's both hard to reach and hard to see. My assembly table brings everything down where it's easier to get at -- the downside, of course, being that it is less useful as a work table. So which one is "best" is a highly individual choice. Someday, I want a shop that has room for both.

None of this is to suggest that a torsion box is the you-gotta-have-one way to go. It's an excellent solution, but hardly the only solution. You'll find some more, and recent, discussion on this entire subject here.

[drumpriest]

Mine is the mini of the group I think. Mine is only 37.5" x 49.5", but I was able to make it from 1 sheet of 3/4 mdf and one 1/2 sheet of 1/2" mdf, which made it CHEAP.

[leehljp]

NICE looking assembly tables!

I did not know the necessity of ATs until a Japanese neighbor and friend (Miano) showed me his. He was making a unique coffee table for a friend and the levelness of his table was essential to measurements, construction and assembly.

He said his table was flat to .001 over the whole table. (It had a machined steel top and 1 meter by 2 meters in size.)

This was the same guy that Sam Maloof gave a autographed copy of his book to and it had a personal note from Sam too. Sam attend Miano's Japanese workshop techniques in San Diego a few years ago.