Coercion Results in Welding Table Purchase

It seems like the exciting news never stops. I have made a decision regarding buying a welding table.

Why am I buying a table at all? I still haven’t finished painting the grinder pedestal I welded together. A fine fabricator I turned out to be. I keep putting things off.

The finish on the top is going to have to be sanded and repainted at least one more time. I also need to enlarge or replace a couple of holes for the bolts that hold the grinder on. I put them in the wrong places.

I really will finish the pedestal. I could use it right now (after using the drill twice). I just want it to look a little better.

Anyway, I had a couple of table ideas in mind. One was to build my own table, which would be somewhat challenging…without a welding table. Another was to buy a Fabblock table from Weldtables.com and assemble it myself. The Fabblock I wanted, plus legs, runs $800 plus shipping. Ow.

There was a third alternative, but my opportunity to try it was temporary, and I let it slip by. Now I have another opportunity, so I’m pouncing.

Northern Tool sells Klutch tools. I think it’s their house brand. They have a welding table that usually sells for almost $400. For some inexplicable reason, they put it on sale for $179. I noticed it a while back. Then, while I was fighting temptation, they took it away! Fiends!

This is a very nice table. The top is 4mm thick, which means it’s around 1/6 of an inch. It has 16mm holes all over it. It comes with a bunch of clamps and fixturing tools. You can open the box, put it together, and start welding without buying a single clamp.

People say the top is generally very flat, but you may get a lemon with a 1/16″ crown or dip. I think it’s worth the risk. It might be possible to improve a warped table, and in any case, it shouldn’t be hard to shim workpieces and get them flat. A 1/16″ bend is not hard to compensate for.

Is it the table of my dreams? No, but it’s very cheap and very good, and if I move to Tennessee, it will be a lot easier to move than a Fabblock. If Northern Tool kills the sale price again, I should actually be able to sell it locally for more than I paid. Then I can buy a Fabblock when I’m firmly situated.

I can use this table to build a bigger table, if I want. That may actually be the best move. My milling machine is about to be returned to me, so preparing slats for a shopmade table will be easy.

Northern Tool made it impossible to say no. They brought the low price back, and then they sent me an email saying they would give me a $10 gift card for ordering online (code 268178). That brings the price to $169 plus tax. The other day I spent $180 on a lame restaurant meal. How can I say no to a welding table that costs $11 less?

Strong Hand Tools makes wonderful [Chinese] stuff, and their version of the Klutch table costs about $430. Strong Hand is actually kind of disturbing, because it’s one of those companies that show us the future. Their products are Chinese, but the quality is really good. I have their version of the famous Bessey clamp, and it looks like an improvement to me.

I can’t wait to abandon my Harbor Freight table. For the money, it is a stellar tool, but when you consider what they cost, that’s faint praise. It’s wobbly, it’s not flat, and it’s small. I may keep it for use as a portable, which is the purpose it’s made for. I do not plan to weld on it in my shop unless I have no choice.

Now I need to get wheels for the new table. Once that’s done, I’ll be sitting pretty.

Speaking of Chinese, I finally have a good source of Chinese food. The only local place I have tried was a disaster. It was hot and dirty, and the proprietress kept screaming at the cook in Chinese. Their kung pao chicken was pretty bad, and instead of cooking the peanuts in sauce, they just dumped dry raw peanuts on top of the food.

Small towns are known for terrible Chinese, as is Miami. My area had only one decent place, and they tore it down to build something or other.

I know good Chinese food. When I was a student at Columbia University, I had access to very good Szechuan places. For example, I used to eat at the Hunan Balcony on upper Broadway. I also know bad Chinese food. The oil smells rancid. The meat always seems to be nearly spoiled. The smell when the kitchen door opens is scary. All the sauce is basically duck sauce. The seasonings are off.

I found myself a recipe for kung pao chicken, over at Epicurious. It’s from a book by a lady named Kuan. I used Epicurious because I’m not a Cook’s Illustrated subscriber any more, and I hate Cooks.com and the Food Network’s revolting recipes. When I think about the Food Network, I always think about Bobby Flay’s inept 325° prime rib recipe. Don’t buy a rib roast and cook it at 325°. Just buy some liquid rubber, pour it in a roast-shaped mold, and let it cure for several days. Same result.

The recipe called for a couple of weird items. It called for black vinegar and hoisin sauce. I went to an Asian grocery to pick up the vinegar. I told the girl there the local Chinese food was heinous. She said it wasn’t Americanized. I can understand why she would stand up for her pals, but no, it has nothing to do with being Americanized. Bad food which is authentic is still bad food.

I can’t tell you what authentic Chinese food tastes like, and I’m not sure I want to find out, because authentic Mexican food is garbage compared to American Mexican food. I can tell when a person is a bad cook, however, regardless of the cuisine.

She sold me a big bottle of black vinegar for $4. I would say it tastes like malt vinegar that has been strained through dirt. I don’t like it. I suspect her brand is really cheap.

I got my hoisin sauce at a supermarket. They had several brands. I don’t like buying prepackaged sauces, but in order to make hoisin sauce, you have to ferment soybeans. Not going to happen. Also, let’s face it: Chinese cuisine standards are pretty weak. I have zero doubt that I have never had a Chinese meal that wasn’t made with stuff from bottles and cans.

Making the dish was not easy. It did not require skill, but there were a lot of ingredients, and the recipe was confusing. Basically, you marinate chicken, prepare sauce ingredients in another bowl, fry the chicken, throw the sauce in, throw in a few more ingredients, and call it good.

The recipe said to put corn starch in the chicken marinade. I am not a Chinese chef, but I’m not an idiot, either, and I don’t see how this can work. If you put starch on meat and then throw it in a hot pan, what happens? The starch burns instantly and sticks to the pan. This is what happened to me, and it was not a surprise. I ended up with a layer of burned stuff on my skillet.

I don’t have a wok. I don’t even have a burner that will work with a wok. I used a 14″ stainless skillet. I don’t think the food really fried all that much, because I don’t have a way to provide that much heat, but here’s the thing: the texture and so on were exactly like what I’ve experienced at good Chinese restaurants, so if I’m doing it wrong with my skillet, they’re also doing it wrong with their fancy woks, and it doesn’t matter at all.

The recipe had virtually no vegetables in it, so I added diced bell peppers, both red and green. So much for authenticity.

I also tripled the sauce recipe. People who commented over at Epicurious said the recipe was extremely dry, so I took their advice and multiplied by three.

The result was very nice, but there was a dirt aftertaste I did not like. I considered the hoisin sauce and the dirt-tasting black vinegar, and I chose the most likely culprit.

Yesterday I made the dish again. I made a lot of changes. No corn starch in the marinade. I halved the black vinegar and made up the difference with balsamic. I cut the number of chiles in half. I also added a can of baby corn, because I like baby corn.

I figure I can add whatever I want to the dish. Here’s a known fact: all spice Chinese chicken dishes taste nearly alike. Kung pao has peanuts. Ta chien has baby corn. Orange chicken has citrus peels. Other than little differences like these, they’re pretty similar. I like baby corn, and I think it belongs in kung pao chicken, along with tasty bell peppers. So there. I would have put little Asian mushrooms in it if I had been able to find them. I think water chestnuts would also be good.

How was the food? Amazing. Best “Chinese” food I’ve ever had, hands-down. There was still a slight dirt taste from the awful black vinegar, which I plan to eliminate next time by blending malt and cider vinegars, but other than that, it could not have been better. I especially liked the way the tiny bits of fresh ginger exploded in citrusy flavors when I bit down on them.

There was too much starch in the sauce. The recipe called for an obscene amount, which I knew was wrong, but I gave the author the benefit of the doubt. The sauce was clumpy and didn’t flow well. Next time, I’ll use half as much, if that.

The recipe calls for one pound of chicken and supposedly feeds 4 people. I am totally serious. I used two pounds, and I plan to get a total of three dinners out of it.

Here is what I learned: professional Chinese chefs are not very good. They must not be putting their hearts into what they do. No surprise. Anyone who has smelled the rear of a typical Chinese joint knows they’re not doing everything they should.

I can’t cook any Chinese dish except this one, and I’ve only cooked it twice, and my recipe still needs work, yet my version blows the real thing away. That’s a scathing indictment of restaurant chefs.

If I decide to learn how to cook anything else, it will be pan-fried dumplings. I can’t think of any other Chinese dishes I like enough to learn how to cook.

I can’t understand why professional cooks are so bad. It’s not just Chinese cooks. It’s nearly universal. It’s like cooking school fundamentally does not work.

I don’t feel like buying a wok or a propane burner, because my food comes out nearly the same as wok-cooked food. I don’t know if stir-frying is really frying, except when there are only a few little things in the wok. Adding a lot of food pretty much moves you into the simmering arena.

What a beautiful future I see stretching out before me. Myself, seated at a wonderful welding table, consuming the best Chinese food in North America. It’s hard to imagine how things could get better, unless I moved a couch into the shop.

Now there’s an idea.

More

I went and got the table. The box was very difficult to get in the car. The weight is only 73 pounds, but it hangs way out there when you’re trying to wrestle with it, and the Northern Tool cart kept trying to scoot around the parking lot while I maneuvered the box.

I thought I felt something going funny in my back, so I slowed down and tried to use common sense. I hate that. Prayed in the car on the way home, and my back seems okay.

I can’t tell you whether it’s a good table until I use it, but things look okay right now.

The top is not far from 3/16″ steel, which is very good for a cheap table. It’s also nearly flat. It looks like it has a 1/32″ crown in the middle. It’s hard to get upset about that. I doubt I’ve ever welded anything that warped less than 1/32″.

The legs have a funny rectangular brace that goes around them. It’s held on by friction, which is not good. The frame has little hooks which fit in holes on the legs and pinch them. I figure I can stabilize it by drilling holes and adding some screws.

The legs have M10x1.5 threaded holes for the feet. I am looking around for casters that will screw into those holes. The table is light enough to pick up and move, but casters would be better.

I can tell it’s going to fit well in my shop, because I’m already using it to hold things I should put away instead.

The square inchage is 864, which is considerably better than the Harbor Freight table, which comes in at just under 600. Also, because the table has round holes instead of long slots, I should not have any problems with objects falling through it. That was always a concern with the other table.

If you follow the directions, the table takes an hour to assemble. If you just guess, you can do it in about 15 minutes.

I have not tried the clamps yet, but they must work, because people are not howling about them all over the web.

I sprayed it down with lanolin and mineral spirits. I want to keep the top shiny and silvery for as long as I can.

Not much to complain about here. I finally have enough tools to weld relatively well. Now all I need is skill.