A Beginner's Welding Table

Fair warning... if you are looking for expert advice on how a beginner can create a welding table, move along - nothing for you here. This is the chronicle of how a beginner created his first homemade welding table. That's a long tradition. Woodworkers make their own tool boxes and workbenches in the course of learning their craft, and welders weld up their own welding tables and welder carts as part of the initial practice.


I actually started with this Harbor Freight 61369 welding table, and I mention it specifically to caution you NOT to buy it!

This thing is so flexible, it's almost impossible to keep flat. I finally wound up building a heavy wooden frame for it, and I also removed those handles that allow it to tilt, and tightened in heavy bolts and nuts to keep it from squirming. I also added a bolt in one corner to attach the ground lead, but the design of the table makes it hard to use clamps to hold the work. I was thrilled when someone was willing to give me a few bucks for it to get it out of the Grant St. Garage.

I researched several welding tables on the web, and found several that use rectangular stock to make the surface. Spacing the pieces allows room for clamps to securely hold the work being welded. I particularly liked this one:

To learn more about that table, visit this link:
https://www.instructables.com/id/Welding-Table-1/

I bought some scrap rectangular tubing from a local supplier, and it sat for a long time. But finally I got time and energy to give it a try. My plan was to create a top to be added to an existing steel table I had procured from Make717. First step, cut the two long pieces of stock into rough lengths:

I needed the pieces to be the same length, and that took some time. My band saw is hobby grade, and I couldn't get the cuts to be really square because the blade bows in heavy stock. I wound up using the milling machine to true up the end that would be the "front" and marked those ends with an X. Then I needed a new longer work stop on the band saw to cut them to length - circled in the photo below:

Using that, I could cut all the rough pieces to exact length:

When that was done, I laid the pieces out on the steel table and began to plan:

It was never the plan to mount the pieces directly on the table - I need room below them to clamp. I had other stock to make rails, and I moved to the milling machine to drill the rails for mounting bolts. Note I'm using the jack I made in this post to hold the far end:

Drilling that steel is hard, and it requires lubricant, which makes plenty of smoke!

Once the drilling was done, I used transfer punches and lots of measuring to mount the rails. I used the ancient technique of "winding sticks" to ensure that everything was parallel, and there was no twist:

Here's a detail of the mounting bolt setup. At any time, I can relatively easily adjust the rails to keep everything level and untwisted:

From here, it would have been easy to just weld on the rectangular tubing and call it a day, but I had another bright idea. If I added captured nuts in each tube, I could use my clamp set from the milling machine on the welding table. I started with a similar setup for the rail, drilling 3/8" holes 3" from each end:

I chose 3" from the end after doing some testing, as the absolute maximum distance I could weld way up inside the tube. Going for the max created some heartburn later... but first, I needed to prepare the inside for welding a nut, grinding away any swarf from the drilling, and making a clean surface around the hole for welding. Since I dissed Harbor Freight earlier, I'll also praise them for the inexpensive 62863 belt sander I used to reach up into the tube - it worked great:

I tested using regular galvanized nuts, but they were hard to weld, and my few remaining brain cells remembered that welding galvanized material creates a poisonous gas. OK... I ordered special weld nuts from Amazon:

The shoulder at the top protects the bolt used to hold them in place, and the scallops (hard to see, but there) allow space for the weld. All good, but trying to reach way up in there was tough. I couldn't see what I was doing, and it was hard to get the right angle on the welder. But an ugly weld is still strong, and trying different techniques, I discovered that backing away a bit from the weld and letting it fill the space worked pretty well. There are 20 nuts, and the 20th weld was also the most photogenic:

I spent time with belt sander and grinder to prepare for the rails and tubes for welding, and finally it was time to weld the tubes to the rails. I found I hadn't left quite enough room between pieces to make it easy, but again, experimentation gave me some solutions. Here's the final welding station:

It's not obvious in the picture, but the welder's ground clamp is attached to one of the rear rail bolts, where it can stay semi-permanently. In use, the typical way to hold the work to be welded will be with standard clamps between the tubes:

All that work to weld in the captured nuts makes it possible to use my milling clamps also:

As a long-time woodworker, I know that as skills progress, it's typical to re-make tool boxes and workbenches over and over. This table is good for now, but we'll see what the next one will achieve!