Extension Table for Bench Shears

[JHCC]

I saw a video a little while back from a fellow (now deceased) who did a lot of sheet metal work that required a lot of precision cutting with his bench shears. To this end, he’d added an angle iron table to its side; here is my version. 

The hold-down has been swung up and back, for greater visibility. I’ll move it back down if I find myself missing it, but the gentleman said he found that holding the stock down onto the table to be both more precise and more secure. 

One of the tips from the video was that you can set up a temporary fence if you need to make repeat cuts at a particular angle. I gave this a try, holding a bit of scrap down first with a spring clamp for adjustment and then with a C-clamp for solidity. 

As you can see from this test cut on some scrap brass, you can get some pretty b good accuracy:

(N.B.: in the above photos, the shear is simple clamped in the bench vise for some quick test cuts. Normally, it would be bolted down onto its stand.)