Brown & Sharpe Surface Plate Stand Modifications

hello Keith rocky revenge machinery org so a couple weeks ago I showed you guys this brown sharp surface plate 24 by 36 surface plate that I picked up on a eBay Buy not too terribly far from you made a little road trip to get it but anyway I'm real happy to have this in and and we're gonna be using this coming up first of the year in December I'm actually going to be hosting a hand scraping course being taught by Richard King Qingwei consultants he's going to be coming to my shop and actually holding a class on scraping and we've needed a good surface plate for that course so I picked this up in hopes that we could use it and I think we should be able to it looks like it's in pretty good shape we are going to get this thing inspected and possibly lapped I'm in the process right now trying to work out details find someone to do that but one thing that I want to do I'm not real happy with the stand that this is home now this is a factory stand this is a brown and sharp surface plate and this is a factory Brown and sharp stand that it's own and the previous owners had put a cabinet in it which is actually pretty nice the stand itself is not bad but what I don't like about it is the way they've got it the actual surface plate mounted in this from everything that I've read and everything that I know about surface plates they're really supposed to be supported by three points up underneath the surface place so you have a point about here here and here and those should be adjustable where you can level this in any direction now this does have a leveling feet on this and that's something else I want to replace I like the leveling feet the ones that are on here they just got bolts up in there small surface pad it's gonna tear up my concrete floor so I am gonna replace those put some better US leveling feet in here but ideally you would support the surface plate by three points instead of letting it just sit down on the frame the way it is right now at least that's my understand that's what I again what I've always been told so what I want to do is I want to come and actually get the surface plate off of the stand we're gonna take and do some work to the stand I want a while I got it apart we're gonna clean it real good probably painted again I'm not real you know this the paint on here is not terrible but I'm just not crazy about it so we're gonna probably go ahead and get it cleaned up repainted but main thing I want to do is take care of the two problems I just talked about 11 feet on the four corners and then put three leveling screws in here so what would he do now is take the plate off and you know it's heavy I don't know how many pounds this thing weighs I mean I can I kind of pick up one edge I don't know that I'd want to hold it very long even if there was two people I'm not sure that it would really be enough to safely pick this up so what we're going to do is we're gonna actually use a little hoist and pick this up and set it off someplace else for temporarily so that we can work on the base and I've got a chain fall set up and we're gonna go ahead and get set up go over here and show you that I used my pallet jack I've repositioned the whole surface plate the cabinet everything over here underneath the chain fall that I've got temporarily mounted in the shop a long long term I really want to get a gantry train in here but for right now one nice thing about having these exposed beams eight bay timber up there you know this plates heavy but it's not that heavy I'm not a bit concerned with using that to lift up here so we're just going to come in here and work off of that I've got some tension on it now just inspect everything make sure it's just like I want looks good we're off of one side I think we're totally here in the base and I should be able to just pull this out right I've got this rolling cart I'll show you this guy's here in a minute I'm actually kind of proud of this cart you're gonna put a piece of plywood under it though just to protect it a little bit you come up just a touch more we should be able to come down on that now all right so that would give me a place to put this temporarily so this base that I got it on kind of stumbled across this the other day I walked into our local Lowe's store and I'm in there usually a couple of times a week at least once a week if not more and I walk by the hardware store or the hardware section and they had this nice rolling cabinet with the drawers and everything in it sitting out there with a sale price on it this thing normally sells for 399 they had it marked down at 279 so I have no idea what the story is on this cabinet you know like I said I walked by and it was sitting out there it had the sales sticker on it it's the only one they had you know I'll be honest with you I'm in there all the time and I look at the the toolboxes all the time I've never seen this in the store so I don't know if they got shipped this thing by accident and really didn't want to have it and just put it out there and mark I really just don't know what the deal was but $120 off I couldn't resist guys I need stored space in the new shop this thing will be great but anyway it should hold this very well it's rated for 1200 pounds capacity which we're well under that on the surface plate for temporary storage on here so anyway I thought I'd share my little bargain from Lowe's that I stumbled across the other day all right so we got the base out that there's one leveling foot that's really off and I probably I'd just go ahead and fix it but I'm about to take them all off anyway so I'm just gonna deal with it for right now it is it driving me a little crazy but here's what we're looking at so ideally according to what I've read on this and what most installation structures will tell you is if you want to have again three leveling points up underneath there and they need to be anywhere from a quarter to a fit the width from the edge here of course the center wouldn't be in the center on the triangle and then I'm coming in from this way again a quarter to the fifth of the width now doing some measuring there's two angle irons and here that this thing sits on and they are right in between one quarter and one-fifth of the distance so these are where they need to be which is good so it's not going to require having to rearrange those but I do need to come in here and I think what I'll probably do is is will drill some holes in here oversize I'm going to come in from the bottom weld a nut on there and then we can put up a bolt in there that can just go up and down and you can hopefully get up underneath there with a wrench or whatever and adjust them as needed so to do this I like this wooden case down here but I think for right now we're gonna take it apart it looks like the way they built it it should come apart without too much trouble so we're gonna go ahead and take all the plywood off and get down to just bare metal and that'll help to cleaning it up and that way when I'm I can get to the bottom to do welding I can I don't have to worry about catching the wood on fire while I'm welding so we're going to go ahead and pull these panels out I think and hopefully won't be too much trouble so this these wood pieces are just put on with some screws there's a nut on the back side there's a looks like there's four on each panel so I'm just putting up rich on the back and we're screw as if in them out here that comes out and that one comes out so another thing that's kind of driving me crazy on this surface plate is this green paint when they painted the base they just kind of painted the bottom of the of the plate as well then don't like that it shouldn't be that way so I put some citrus strip on here and voila and I got a couple places I'm gonna have to touch back up and let a little dab or two but that ought to clean up real nice well this is kind of like a jigsaw puzzle but we finally got it all apart and it should go back in pretty easily I may change the design just a little bit but I think we're going to reuse it I mean it's pretty well built it's in pretty good shape so and a lot of work went into putting that together so don't light the shelves on the one side and I me redo the shelves a little bit but other than that I think it's not like it I brought the base to the surface grinder out to the museum I want to do some welding on it and don't have a welder in my home shop yet so anyway I got out here while I've got up on the tailgate and it's right here easy I went ahead and pull all the leveling feet out which were just bolts and I've ordered some actual leveling feet for this it will have a true pad on the bottom those haven't come in yet but I'm gonna get these prepped up so even while I had it apart I took my angle grinder with the wire wheel I've just cleaned these up real good there was a lot of dirt and just stuff all over them and also I'm taking the time to just run a tap up through these these nuts that are welded on here that the leveling screws will go up into and some of these were really tight that gun that does not want to start there it goes some of these were really tight getting the getting the the bolts out off this one here in particular so I'm just going to clean these up place these threads and when I get back they'll be ready for the leveling feet to go into I'm also gonna go ahead and just put some little short 5/8 inch bolts in the bottom of these I'm just going to screw them all the way in really the only reason I'm doing this is just temporarily I don't want threads and stuff to get up in those threads while I'm working on it or dragging on the floor and mess so these would just kind of be temporary and we'll replace these with the leveling feet later on I've laid out where I want to put my three holes here and again according to the instructions on doing this you want three points of contact on your surface plate and basically you want about anywhere from a quarter to a fifth in from the edges all the way around now on my plate there's some actual pads on the bottom most plates have this and that's just a little protection pads and I could actually see the marks on here where those pads were coming in contact with this and what I want to do is I want to bear on those areas and I measured and yeah it's it's right in line with the 1/4 to 1/5 rule but I'm kind of centered up on those pads that's actually on my plate and what we're gonna do is we're gonna drill a hole through this I'm going to use a 5/8 inch bolt as a basically a leveling screw that goes up and down to where you can adjust this three points of contact you can easily adjust it to get your plate level in the shop so I'm going to start out I've already marked these I've already put a center punch in them and we're just going to take a a hand drill and drill them I'm going to start out with a 3/8 inch hole and then we'll go up to a 5/8 inch hole topless in hammer mode alright now for the five eighths hold I put a little dab of oil on these just to kind of help lubricate it this is a not really a variable-speed drill I wish it was I think it is I don't see anywhere to vary it I wish I could slow it down a little bit I've come in here and just round off the paint around these holes where I'd have a good area to weld get good contact with everything we took a bolt there's actually a nut on the top and bottom right now I've got and what's in here and that's just to keep everything straight make sure that it's lined up where it's going up and down the bottom nuts going to come off we could actually leave that in there to jam it on there if we want to I don't really think it's going to be necessary but that's definitely an option but we're going to weld these on the top and I could weld them on the bottom but I think I'm gonna put them on the top I want to have a gap in between the base in the stone so I can get a wrench up in here and I tighten and loosen these up they're gonna have to come in from the sides and I'm afraid if I did on the bottom that I would just have a hard time getting my hand up in here to make an adjustment so I'm kind of forcing it to give me some space in there at least that's my reason plus the weight will be going down the table instead of pushing out so not that my well would break but if it did basically everything would be on the weld of this on the bottom here the weight is actually going down onto that piece of steel so we're gonna go ahead and put these in place let me turn the welder on and we'll get that done I'm happy with that I think just welding on two sides right there will be plenty strong enough to keep them turn in like I said the way it'll be going down on the table so those are pretty much done we'll pull the bottom nuts off the next real modification we got to make though is this surface plate was sitting all the way down this frame and you got these four corners where the lip stands up and that's to keep the plate from coming off you know shuffling around so now with these stands in here basically the plate would be above these corners so I'm going to have to weld an extension on these and I'm thinking about probably just putting about an inch and a half of height on it the I measured the actual step in the stone and I've got a little over two inches about two and eight inches from the bottom of the stone up to where the ledge comes out and you know right now these putting these in here it's going to raise me up about an inch which is about where we are here I'm gonna go about an inch and a half farther and that should be more than enough to contain the stone and keep from rotating around so let me see if I can find some angle iron and we'll get in here and get some pieces cut and get these areas prepped for welding and weld on some extensions family a piece of two inch wide quarter inch thick angle iron and we're just going to cut a full little extension pieces here to weld on to the to the crying we've got the first one here prepped up and ready to weld and coming here and cleaned up everything we've got a bead out area there where the beads going to go and I just took some little pieces of metal and clamped into the backside of this and then clamped it again up here and that's just giving me something to hold it in place to position it so everything is nice and flush like it needs to be and with that I think we're ready to weld this in place I ended up taking this clamp off up here it was just I couldn't get it positioned exactly right I really got it nice and flush now so anyway we're gonna go with it should have my welder set so that's uh see we can weld this in all right come on a flip it up I like welding flat so we'll flip it up and do the other side then I'm going to grind those down flush I'm pretty happy with the way this turned out those looked real good I think once you get some paint on here to be hard to tell they were added on which is just what I was going after and speaking of pain I think that's next I'm going to take this thing and wipe it down with some mineral spirits real good and probably just shoot it with some rattle campaign I've got some some paint that I purchased probably about a year and a half ago it's a rust-oleum it's a darker green in this and it's that kind of crinkle finish paint and I bought it for a project that I was planning on doing and will think some things happen we ended up never doing the project so I've got that stuff sitting on shelf and that's what I'm gonna use I just finally because I got it and I like the color I think would be fine so I'm gonna get this wiped down I think what I'll do is we'll turn it upside down paint the bottom first let it dry flip it back over we'll paint the top where everybody can you know partner mainly be visible and I think we'll be pretty much done with this so again what I'm using here is a rust-oleum hammered and the color is a deep green and it's a good bit darker than what was here but all right I think I'm gonna like this I've used this color on some other stuff and I just like the way it looks deal we've got this all painted now I'm back out at my home shop again and it's pretty much ready to go back together and the first thing I want to do is I want to go ahead and put the actual new leveling feet in into the the part itself so these are kind of a swivel leveling foot it's got the 5/8 inch thread on the top nice a rubber pad on the bottom you know that's a good good two inches in diameter on the pads so these are rubber no skid and each one of them will adjust up and down to level so you know we put these little temporary bolts in here while we were painting and what-have-you we're just going to take those out and I get all these new feet put back in I get a wrench and do that as long as I got this thing up on the sawhorses we're a little bit easier to work on look wait and start reassembling the first thing that goes in is this bottom board and it kind of slides in here like such and yeah I think my holes are lining up so I'm gonna go ahead and get all these screws put it in place and get them tightened down I should mention that off-camera I took all these pieces of wood and just hit them with some sandpaper on a random orbital sander just to clean up any rough places and went ahead and painted everything pre painted everything will probably paint it put another coat of paint on once everything's finished just to make sure we got a good even coat but I did go ahead and pre paint both sides of the wood before it wasn't painting on both sides next pieces go in is the back if I remember how we took this apart and it just kind of comes in here some notches cut into it fit up in here and well she's starting to look more like a cabinet again I got all the sides and doors and everything on I just got kind of paint on this a little bit wet but I like it I like it so I'm gonna let this paint dry we'll set this thing down probably tomorrow and hopefully get the stone back on their surface place cabinet is all back together now I've got all my wood pieces back on we got the the doors back on everything else and again I took two of the shelves out just to have a little bit more room in here so I got one small shelf at the top and two at the bottom I do still need to get some hardware to go back in here the locks that were on here didn't have the keys they were kind of messed up they were open when I got them so I just removed and I got to get some of those probably Lowe's or someplace and get something so let's see the next thing I need to do here is I got looking at this and the top of this is open and we're gonna have the plate there's gonna be a gap in here and basically that's just a place for dust and stuff can get down to cabinet I wanted to put a cover over this I wouldn't had a piece of a metal discipline to plate some was a number 10 gauge steel or something like that it's about an eighth of an inch thick roughly I had a piece of cut and then I drilled three holes where it'll slide down over this and I just painted it I think it's try we're gonna go ahead and drop that in place and that's basically just a little dust cover to keep trash and stuff from getting inside the cabinet let me go grab that we'll put it on here we go so again I just drilled three holes on here with these to go over I'm not gonna worry about welding this in place or anything it's just going to sit on there and again that just give me some nice clearance there and with that I think we're ready to put the surface plate back on and be done with this so let's get the camera resituated we'll go ahead and get this up underneath the the hoist there we'll pick it up and then put the new cabinet under pull this cabinet out new cabinet is on the pallet jack where i can just kind of wheel it right up underneath here okay I think that's it the last real step here is getting in the surface plate level and because it's on the three-point system this is very easy and just for record I did level the base with the adjustment screws under got it fairly level it's probably not perfectly level but the fine-tuning is done on the three-point system and you can see them a little bit low on this side right now this end needs to come up so I can get up under here with a wrench on these screws and I'll just adjust this bubble this is a there's two screws here in here so it want to level it in this direction first I'm looking at it from the side and I was I couldn't see the lines very well I actually went the wrong way there at the very end and went a little too far but that's pretty level there I'll do this again when I put this plate where it's going to end up going and then we'll move the level now this direction and level it across it's actually pretty close so it needs to go down ever so slightly to where I can see it too far that's pretty close all right so so that's the leveling process and again I'm just kind of doing it right now for your sake this is going to get moved actually a couple more times before it really gets set where it is and that's what I really find - this thing in I've actually got a master precision level that's accurate - what is it a half a thousandth or half a half a ten thousandth per foot I think is what it's accurate to and I'll probably break that one out when we do our final leveling and Lex they get this thing sitting just exactly right where we wanted to go next step for the surface plate the cabinet's done I'm happy with how this turns out other than putting some locks in here but one thing I'm a little bit concerned with on the surface plate is that I really just don't know how flat it truly is I bought this used you know I can look at it and say yeah it doesn't look that bad but when you're talking about flatness and millionths of an inch you can't see that with your naked eye so I'm gonna actually get this plate calibrated and we're probably more than likely get it lapped as well to get it down to probably a double a certification for flatness which is you know a tool room inspection grade we're going to be using this as a reference for doing a scraping work so I want it to be really accurate because this would be the reference that I'll be scraping against and so my plan is is uh there's a company down in Florida that does this work that we this not too terribly far from where I'm at been talking with a viewer of mine who lives in the Gainesville Florida area and he's wanting to get a couple surface plates done I want to get this one done as well as a smaller plate that I have and then I have another friend that wants to get one about the same size done we're gonna take them all down to his place in Gainesville Florida set him up in his shop and they're going to come to his shop and just do them all at one time because they charge a minimum fee for coming out the price for you know calibrating it and lapping it you know to a double a finish on a 2 by 3 plate you know it's a little less than $200 which I don't think it's terrible but there's like a $500 minimum that they charge a mileage to travel there and all that so getting multiples there at one time it just gets the per unit price down celexa we're gonna have 5 or 6 plates for them to come do it one time so this plates going to get hauled down to Gainesville and then brought back up here once that's done and once that is done it'll be it'll be ready to go so anyway here it is I'm real happy with how it turned out looks much better you know again I put my labels on the front you know I kind of just like the looks of those this one's kind of worn this one this top label I said why is the difference in this one this is kind of worn down they got remember the wooden cover covers this up so it probably stay covered up most the time whereas this one stayed exposed but anyway I like the way it turned out I think we made some improvements we got much better leveling feet on the bottom rather than just bolts sticking out nice big footprint was rubber pad the cabinet's been gone through everything's been repainted we put the three-point leveling in here you know we've raised up the edges here to accommodate for the extra height that's in here now and all in all I think we've made major improvements to the stand and soon-to-be to the surface plate so with that that'll be a wrap thank you guys for watching as always leave me a thumbs up if you like what you see leave me some comments and I'm getting behind on my comments you guys are overloading me on Congress plus I've been really busy lately but I'm gonna get to them guys I promise and anyway we'll talk to you guys next time thanks a lot

Channel: Keith Rucker - VintageMachinery.org

Views: 34,037

Rating: 4.9847198 out of 5

Keywords: Machine Shop, Machinist, Restoration, Vintage Machinery, Metalworking, how to run a mill, Keith Rucker, VintageMachinery.org, Hand Scraping

Id: lBJmzr6a2oM

Length: 31min 26sec (1886 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 23 2016