Arbor Press Stand Beaten into Submission

My arbor press stand is fundamentally finished. It still needs casters, little things to prevent it from tipping forward, paint, and two bolts. I may also put a shelf on it, as well as something to catch broaches that fall through the top.

I had an interesting time working on it today.

Yesterday I got all the legs put on. The front legs were joined by a crossmember at the bottom, as were the rear legs. When I measured today, I found out the front legs were warped toward the rear, the rear legs were warped toward the front, and the front and rear sets were angled with respect to each other, like the blades of a pair of scissors.

Rather that tear the project up and start over, I decided to try brute force.

I cut pieces of wood on the band saw, and I jammed them between the legs to hold them apart. When I did this, one set of legs ended up too far apart at one point, so I also had to put a long wood clamp on them. The scissor effect was still there, but I was a lot closer to home.

I welded a front-to-rear crossmember to one set of legs. Then I used another wood clamp to pull on the crossmember and force the two sets of legs parallel. I had scribed lines on the new crossmember and the old one to tell me when they were lined up. I had to move everything about 3/8″ to get the witness marks to line up. I tacked again, got rid of everything that was in the way, and welded up the tacks before they could explode from the tension I had put on the steel.

It looks like it worked. The bottom of the stand is maybe 3/32″ off flat, and that’s about as good as I could have done even had I known what I was doing. The top of the stand is flat. I don’t know how square everything is yet, but it can’t be too bad, because it looks okay.

I put my arbor press on my hydraulic table and lifted it up so I could put it on the stand. Once it was up there, I understood how bad the Chinese casting was. The stand’s top is made fairly precisely, but the casting does not line up with it all that well. The opening in the arbor press is very irregular, and it extends past the opening in the top.

Next time, I’ll put more parts on the stand, and soon, I hope to paint it and get this over with. It will be fantastic, being able to use and move my arbor press.

Maybe I’ll eventually make another stand, just to prove I can do it.