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My apologies to both Steve Miller and George Lucas. lol

I’ve decided that I have no legitimate use for a table that can be extended beyond six feet, so I decided that I was gong to remove the Watertown Slide from the table and permanently lock the front of the table to the back half along with the rear leg and rail section which is ordinarilly kept in position by how the table slide connected these three sub-assembles together. So I got out out my collection of corner brackets and fixing plates, along with a squirt or three of glue and clamped it up for 24 hours and everything bonded quite well and at this point, I should expect to never hear it creak or squeak again.

All of that said, the slide assembly still has my keen interest because once it was removed, I took notice of how this thing might serve as a very neat and unique tail vise assembly for my work bench. Much of it looks to be workable and mountable without too much drama beyond finding an appropriate vise screw kit to mate the front and back ends together or apart, and be able to grip a wide variety of material shapes and sizes. But the screw kit will have to wait a bit till I can acquire that bit of it.

One of the things that gave rise to this idea of mine was when looking at a decently sturdy lab jack I have in use on my electronics corner of the room. This is one of those funky scissor lift designs which can adjust from a height of 12 inches down to its ground position at 3 inches tall. One long screw travels between both legs assemblies via threaded holes in the support cross-members which either scissor in or away from each other, depending on which way the screw is turned by a handy oversized turning knob. So I mentioned all that because I then was looking at some tail vise screw kits for under bench mount, and one of those designs I saw made use of a scissor assembly with the vise screw running in line and paralel with the scissor but not intersecting with it. This was to aid in gripping different shapes like our opposable thumbs do for us, but in a far more restricted sphere of reliable grip…unless the vise face boards are made concave, as our palms often find steady employment, making a cupping shape and grip. So I mentioned that bit just now to explain how two independently resizable "serving arms" used as a the table vise’s scissor benefits of only requiring a single screw to work the vise action which can now also grasp irregular shapes and act in that cupping motion. But the one advantage my crazy idea can offer, (assuming I can find a 6 foot long vise screw; highly unlikely, )I could then have a tail vise that extends out to about four and a half feet, with a minimum 3 x 3 inch sold oak exterior front board which will give a working width of about 16 inches. So anything from a toothpick up to pro sized WWF wrestler could conceivable be placed between the design’s front to back ends. I’m pretty sure said wrestler will foil my evil plans and have me locked into it while he laughs at my feeble-t. .

As for the claw-foot desk/utility table, I’m going to still make use of the two table top Mahogany veneered 3/4" solid spruce core sections by building a small riser to crate some additional storage space between them and also get the total height of the table up a bit higher to make sawing a bit less of a strain on my back…or, this higher height design, might also work as an oddball stand up computer desk, which seems to be all the rage these days. I’ll have some pics up of all that plan/idea in the near future.

The 2 pictures posted here are the same shot with some different post processing on each one. The bluer background gives a hint as to the original camera position within my man-cave which is quickly becoming over-crowded from all the gear that having multiple hobbies and interests will consume in square footage and money! 🙂

Cheers! 🙂

Posted by jeffpeletz@startmail.com on 2020-09-22 23:02:10

Tagged: , Antique , sliding table , dining , desk , study , dressing , tables , mahogany , watertoen , woodworking , desktop , 4k , wallpaper