Welding Table

[Charlotte]

A little while back someone expressed a wish for a welding table.   As it Happens I decided that I was tired of cleaning stuff off my work table every time I wanted to weld on it.

I bought one from Harbor freight yesterday.  I got marked down with coupon so worked out as inexpensive measured against time and hassel factor.

30x19 7/8 "  top  32 High  maybe 1/8 thick steel   Chinese Made of course.  Light duty of course.  amateur grade equipment.  does tilt 45 and 90 deg from horizontal.

Does have slots that can be use to hold Jigs and clamp.  Assembly requires two adjustable wrenches, Phillip's screw driver.  I needed a rat tail file to clean up a couple of ragged bolt holes.  Like all Chinese cheap stuff it has some sharp edged metal from stamping. 

I don't do heavy welding just small stuff these days so the 100 lb claimed capacity is adequate.

[Kozzy]

Looking at the one I guessed you got plus a similar one at the other China outlet, I notice that the other guys sell a bridging plate so you can hook two of those tables side to side and get about a 90" working length (table, bridge, table).  Just an interesting adaptation that could probably be easily made if someone needs a longer work area.

As much as I hate the junk at the source you listed, sometimes quick and dirty (and cheap) gets the job done.  

 

[notownkid]

1 hour ago, Kozzy said:

As much as I hate the junk at the source you listed, sometimes quick and dirty (and cheap) gets the job done.  

20 yrs. ago I wouldn't have darkened their doors but now retired the old fixed income story I have more than I wish but they work most of the time so I keep looking at their stuff.  I will soon be 2 1/4 hrs to the closest HF store so that should slow down the process some.  I have looked at the welding table my self. 

[SpankySmith]

We just had a HF open about 2 miles from me, previously I had to drive about 45 minutes to get to one.  I've been coveting that welding table, too, beats the heck out of the rigged up table-ish surface I'm currently using for welding.  

My only gripe with those and most any I see is the height.  I'm not that tall but I guess I seldom weld big things, so most of the time I find myself hunched over any welding table - bad on the old AND new neck I just had installed.  If I ever do break down and buy that one at HF I'll have to figure out a modification to jack it up a bit higher.

[jumbojak]

I just looked the table up on the HF website and it lists zinc plating as one of the features. By my thinking, a galvanized welding table may not be the greatest idea to come from HF. Sure, it won't rust as easily as an unplated table, but if someone decided to tack something to the table or had to grind off spatter there's a potential fume hazard. 

Is your table galvanized Charlotte?

[notownkid]

Unless you suit up the fumes from welding in general  isn't all that great for us.  I always ask myself is this weld really needed and can I do this outside instead of in the shop.  when I wired the new shop I've got outlets just inside the doors to plug in the welder.   

Spanky  I find it easier to add heights to things than to cut down legs unless I want wobbly the end result.   

[mutant]

I have that HF table. For me, it's great since I'm space challenged. I like being able to fold it up and store out of the way. I highly recommend it if your projects fit on it.

[Charlotte]

Zinc??? well folks  Let me say this about that:   cool your jets, slow your roll,  hang loose.  Yes it does have a quick and very thin coating of quick dip zinc.  You would have to be trying to weld to the table with deliberate intent and doing deep inhales at the same time.  

For normal use unless you take rose bud to it you won't have any trouble from zinc fumes.  The upside of the thin coat is that it will generally wear off over the years and if sprayed with Pam the BB's will slide off.  Zinc is an essential element in human diet and some people think Lozenges with zinc in them help fight colds.

The hazard from zinc is breathing the fumes produced when it is heated in a fire as from paint stripping or heating with a torch or forge where there substantial amounts to be vaporized.

I know there are a lot people that correctly caution member about putting Hot dip galvanized materials their forge.  It is good to be aware that there is a potential problem.  On the other hand a quick, cosmetic, coating on the surface of a work table is not the sort of thing we need to worry about.  

 

 

[Frosty]

Any of you who follow my maunderings know what I think of the over-reaction to zinc. Unless you're sensitive to zinc you have to seriously over dose on the smoke to suffer more than a little acheyness that evening. That includes Jim, Paw Paw Wilson's FATAL experience with zinc smoke. I till have trouble imagining someone with his experience exposing himself with such gross negligence as that.

Anyway, a galvanized welding table would in general be a GOOD thing. Zinc has a lower melting temperature than steel so when you strike an arc on the work it won't have to even spark to make good grounding contact. I'm sure you've noticed the tiny spark between your work and the table or ground clamp. Galvy has another superior ground characteristic the table won't be rusty, you can just brush off the surface dirt and it's good to go.

As Charlotte says, don't weld directly on it without EXPECTING zinc smoke, don't use a torch directly on it, etc. and it isn't going to poison you. Another thing to know, burning zinc is very distinctive, it burns with a blue green flame and the smoke is like floating feathers laced together. If you need a safe practical demonstration is to toss a SMALL clipping of galvy wire or tin in your forge and watch it. It'll have to get to the high medium orange heat before it burns and it'll be obvious. Do it outdoors, remember what it looked like start to finish and avoid THOSE conditions. Only ignorance leads to the blind panic Zinc reaction we read about here so often.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Bowland]

Never underestimate hot dipped galv. One good lungfull will put you off with flue like symptoms and it can be worse far worse in fact 

I suspect the table is electroplated far less dodgy stuff return leads on welding sets often have it applied 

 

[Frosty]

1 hour ago, Bowland said:

Never underestimate hot dipped galv. One good lungfull will put you off with flue like symptoms and it can be worse far worse in fact 

I suspect the table is electroplated far less dodgy stuff return leads on welding sets often have it applied 

 

Lots of experience with zinc smoke or just repeating what you're read on the internet? If only one lungful makes you sick you're sensitive to zinc oxide so stay away from sun screen and multi vitamin pills too. so, what exactly is the health difference between hot dip and electroplated galvanization?

Never underestimate how exaggerated out of useful reason common sense measures can get.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[jumbojak]

5 hours ago, Charlotte said:

Zinc??? well folks  Let me say this about that:   cool your jets, slow your roll,  hang loose.  Yes it does have a quick and very thin coating of quick dip zinc.  You would have to be trying to weld to the table with deliberate intent and doing deep inhales at the same time.  

For normal use unless you take rose bud to it you won't have any trouble from zinc fumes.  The upside of the thin coat is that it will generally wear off over the years and if sprayed with Pam the BB's will slide off.  Zinc is an essential element in human diet and some people think Lozenges with zinc in them help fight colds.

The hazard from zinc is breathing the fumes produced when it is heated in a fire as from paint stripping or heating with a torch or forge where there substantial amounts to be vaporized.

I know there are a lot people that correctly caution member about putting Hot dip galvanized materials their forge.  It is good to be aware that there is a potential problem.  On the other hand a quick, cosmetic, coating on the surface of a work table is not the sort of thing we need to worry about.  

 

That was my point, people intentionally welding on the table. Say, someone buys a welder and this table from HF, watches a few YouTube videos and fires it up with no professional guidance or substantial research. Heck, you can buy torch sets at HF too, and what better place to practice your cutting/welding/brazing skills than on the welding table you just bought? That's not to say that the table was a bad purchase for you, only that it could indeed be bad for someone less well informed. I just don't think it's the most well thought out product in their lineup. Potential liabilities and all that, not to mention additional cost, but that's their decision.

I'm hardly one to panic over the prospect of galvanization. I steer clear of it as much as possible when I suspect fumes may come my way though. 

[Frosty]

58 minutes ago, jumbojak said:

That was my point, people intentionally welding on the table. Say, someone buys a welder and this table from HF, watches a few YouTube videos and fires it up with no professional guidance or substantial research. Heck, you can buy torch sets at HF too, and what better place to practice your cutting/welding/brazing skills than on the welding table you just bought? That's not to say that the table was a bad purchase for you, only that it could indeed be bad for someone less well informed. I just don't think it's the most well thought out product in their lineup. Potential liabilities and all that, not to mention additional cost, but that's their decision.

I'm hardly one to panic over the prospect of galvanization. I steer clear of it as much as possible when I suspect fumes may come my way though. 

I agree people shouldn't do dangerous things without some instruction or at least research but you can't realistically make people take a test before buying tools, equipment, vehicles, chemicals, kitchen supplies, food, etc. can we?

Everything is dangerous if done in a stupid enough manner. Even being careful bad things happen more people poison themselves with dinner let's not mention left overs, than most anything else.

I try to keep the sky is falling crowd in check in my limited fashion because exaggerating moderate to low level hazards into life and death at ANY level warnings is flat out dangerous, FAR more dangerous than things like zinc oxide smoke. What's the danger? The Cry WOLF Effect is one where people get so inured to loud you're gonna DIE!!! !!! warnings they stop paying attention to real warnings.

Here's an example most of us have experience with. You've seen road work warning or hazard signs right?  Black on Orange "Men working ahead" or Black on Yellow, "Blind Intersection Ahead", etc. An orange sign with orange or green flags on it is eye catching, you read it and look for the situation being warned against. Right? Now suppose the company set those signs and never took them down. How long do you think it'd be before drivers stopped paying attention to the warnings?

About the 3rd. time through and folk stop paying attention in that zone. Up a week or so and folk stop paying attention to warning signs in OTHER zones.

This is why fire trucks, ambulances, police cruisers, etc. don't run with their strobes on all the time.

A warning without a real danger is a training exercise in disregarding warnings. This is one reason the '60s saw such a HUGE explosion of drug use. The Harry Anslinger years of drugs WILL KILL YOU with it's Trademark alarmist movie, "Reefer Madness." The hype turned out to not be the case with many drugs, marijuana being the poster child for the GVT. is lying about ALL drugs movement.

Don't get me wrong, I don't encourage drug use nor unsafe practices in the shop. Stay out of zinc smoke, while it's not outright poisonous unless significantly exposed you aren't supposed to BREATH it!

If you don't know if something is dangerous don't do it, ask an adult or expert and if you're bending the rules GO SLOW.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Bud in PA]

Whenever I encountered zinc, in the course of my job as a welder, I tried to use common sense.  When outside I always positioned the wind at my back, whenever possible. Inside I would use an exhaust fan. There were times when I had no choice but to weld on it. Has anybody ever heard of the theory about drinking milk when welding zinc?

[Frosty]

26 minutes ago, Bud in PA said:

Whenever I encountered zinc, in the course of my job as a welder, I tried to use common sense.  When outside I always positioned the wind at my back, whenever possible. Inside I would use an exhaust fan. There were times when I had no choice but to weld on it. Has anybody ever heard of the theory about drinking milk when welding zinc?

Yes it's called chelation but in reality you need to start drinking milk before you start breathing zinc smoke. Milk induces mucus production and flow which inhibits the zinc oxide particles from hooking into your lung tissue and carries it out faster. Take just a tiny sip of milk and your mouth waters. This is it's value in protection.

The chelation hypothesis is unproven and isn't even demonstrated in tests so chelation is questionable at best.

Yeah, I read about zinc oxide ingestion a LOT, I used to burn a lot of rod on galvy, been sick and avoid it as much as possible.

If you stand with the breeze from your side you wont have smoke swirling back and up against you like it does with the breeze at your back. Intuition says from behind you is better but in fact it's the one that traps the most smoke against you and swirls it up into your welding shield. From the front is a little better even.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Bowland]

9 hours ago, Frosty said:

Lots of experience with zinc smoke or just repeating what you're read on the internet? If only one lungful makes you sick you're sensitive to zinc oxide so stay away from sun screen and multi vitamin pills too. so, what exactly is the health difference between hot dip and electroplated galvanization?

Never underestimate how exaggerated out of useful reason common sense measures can get.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

No if you want details I was on a job site some 25 years ago. We were working up in the rafters of a steel framed building 

All the structural was galvanized.  We thought the scale of the building and the big doors would keep us safe enough. It didn't the guy who was up there welding in new sections got a good dose. 

Hospitalised him. He then took prescribed drugs for the next few years I knew him as a result

Milk has practically no effect. Welders in UK shipyards who were on galv got free milk and extra pay years back. Today our health and safety executive will bang the boss into criminal courts if he allows his guys to weld galv without full ppe 

Do not take galv lightly! BTW some spend a huge amount more time on the internet than myself - it's a relivent point

9 hours ago, Frosty said:

Lots of experience with zinc smoke or just repeating what you're read on the internet? If only one lungful makes you sick you're sensitive to zinc oxide so stay away from sun screen and multi vitamin pills too. so, what exactly is the health difference between hot dip and electroplated galvanization?

Never underestimate how exaggerated out of useful reason common sense measures can get.

Frosty The Lucky.

Basically the thickness of coating. In the case of poisons dosage is highly relivent.  I am grinding the sprue off a newly galvanized hand railing prior to painting later today. If it was plated rather than dipped there would be no need and if I did even a light sand could remove the coatings 

 

[Frosty]

And you illustrate my point perfectly. You state as your example a fellow who spent a SHIFT in the RAFTERS where the smoke collects needing hospitalization. Then sound the warning that ONE lungful will make you sick. This is EXACTLY the sort of gross exaggeration that causes people who get a couple lungsfull and only feel a little off to disregard proper health warnings and safety procedures. This isn't just my opinion, I held certifications in multiple safety programs and was responsible for planning and enforcing safe work practices on job sites. I had the pull to shut an operation DOWN with a phone call if I saw fit and nobody bucked me. I was called in to consult on more than one job. I am NOT an internet diva.

You can read every post I've made here or anywhere and if you fine ONE where I say to ignore PPE I'll wash your feet and do it in public. I've been trying to counteract the damage to safe practices gross exaggerations have done for more than 30 years.

Breathing ANY smoke is bad for you but if one lungful of zinc smoke makes you sick you have an allergy, not a toxicity problem. And did I NOT say milk chelation is unfounded "that's a myth" the only POSSIBLE benefit of drinking milk is enhanced mucus secretion if started before exposure?

Telling people to stay out of zinc smoke is a good thing but telling people that relatively minor exposures they KNOW from personal experience to NOT BE TRUE will make them sick or send them to the hospital is making things less safe.

 

[Bowland]

Your twisting what I said here

 As a matter of fact one lungfull of many things other than air will kill ( water is the best known)  a lungfull of zinc fume will certainly if you take it literally.

The point I am making is hot dip is a lot different from plated 

Here is s handrail galvanising having been done by hot dip

You can see the horrible great lumps (  these need polishing down with the sanding disc)  each blob is way more than a zinc pill and welding or heating this stuff is a very real hazard to health. 

In the galvanising plant people are not allowed to eat or drink and this has to be done in a rest area clear of the tanks. Wash hands notices all over for good reason it's toxic in quantity 

Also a return clamp off one of my welders - plated!  No real hazard but sensible to wear some ppe and work in an open vented place ( though you will see many arcing up on these)  in reality I wouldn't plate a welding bench but if it was thin and I was going to ship them across the oceans and leave them dockside then yeah not a bad plan

Please don't lead people to think zinc poses no real danger there is good reasons why so many welders suffer chronic lung issues later on in thier careers. Not to mention other things it might lead to 

Of course there are even thinner coatings than the clamp shown 

[Charlotte]

you are of course assuming that the clamp has zinc plating.   It could be dip nickel for that matter. 

Have you run tests?   

cold galvanized iron is much thinner than Hot Dip.   It's been years since I saw Hot dip galvanized in the local hardware store Pipe fittings.

Just saying !  Be careful, be aware, be informed , be safe, DONT" PANIC.

[Frosty]

I'm twisting things?! You're equating a lungful of zinc smoke to a lungful of water and I'm twisting things? I suppose rescue breathing for drowning victims doesn't work in your world, or maybe it was a galvanized bucket of water? Even your silly examples are getting . . . ridiculous.

This is my last reply to you on this subject you're having to search out silly exaggerations to TRY to justify yourself. Please just stop the foolish exaggerations you're embarrassing yourself and doing no one any good.

[Bowland]

1 hour ago, Charlotte said:

you are of course assuming that the clamp has zinc plating.   It could be dip nickel for that matter. 

Have you run tests?   

cold galvanized iron is much thinner than Hot Dip.   It's been years since I saw Hot dip galvanized in the local hardware store Pipe fittings.

Just saying !  Be careful, be aware, be informed , be safe, DONT" PANIC.

Tests? Well when the guys arc up on them it leaves that white powder with the yellow edges. Lol 

 

1 hour ago, Frosty said:

I'm twisting things?! You're equating a lungful of zinc smoke to a lungful of water and I'm twisting things? I suppose rescue breathing for drowning victims doesn't work in your world, or maybe it was a galvanized bucket of water? Even your silly examples are getting . . . ridiculous.

This is my last reply to you on this subject you're having to search out silly exaggerations to TRY to justify yourself. Please just stop the foolish exaggerations you're embarrassing yourself and doing no one any good.

Fair enough reducing to the ridiculous seems to have made the point " be safe"