Vintage Steel/Cast Table Base

[Maui]

I picked this base up quite a while ago. It was painted white but had lots of areas where the paint has come off in various sized patches. These patches had been painted over by someone years ago, and there were streaks of rust in several places too, especially on the top. The underside was completely rusted. It really was ugly. So a few weeks ago I put a braided wire wheel on my angle grinder and spent over an hour stripping off all of the paint and rust. It was a pretty messy job, and I was glad I wore a respirator for it. I wiped the clean metal down with Naptha, and then painted it with Rust-Oleum Hammered Verde Green. I plan to mount a refinished butcher block top to it and use it as a work bench. It is suprisingly heavy, and should be solid as a rock. And I've got several vises that I have restored and painted the same color, so it should look pretty good when it is done.

 

[Packard V8]

Very interesting. I've never seen one exactly like it. It will be nice and solid if the work bench is not too long. Leverage does work.

I plan to mount a refinished butcher block top to it and use it as a work bench.

JMHO, but thinking about it, but what might be cool is to make that as one leg of a longer bench; maybe a pair of braced hardwood 4x4s as the other leg. Then make your wooden top as one end, with the two outside boards that much wider than the steel top and bolted to its sides. Sometimes it's very handy to have a steel work surface with holes in it for hold-downs, jigs and positioning.

jack vines