Workbench Height - At the Wrist. Good Idea? FAQ

I like the idea of TS height...couldn't hurt to provide for some adjustability

When I was in the Coast Guard I worked on transmitters that ran at 15KV-DC and transmitted in the mega-watt range.

The station at Port Clarence, AK:

When we were trying to find intermittent arcing within the transmitter, we'd take the panels off the high voltage sections, turn off the lights in the building and run the power supply up to 20 - 25KV. After the flash-bang, we'd swapped out the bad parts.

In the picture from the bottom of the tower, you can see the above ground tunnel that we used to get to the T building in bad weather. Poorly lit and unheated. Lightening struck the tower and set one of the transmitters on fire. When the alarms went off, I jumped on the bicycle that we used to ride through the tunnel and headed to the T-Building. The lights in the tunnel had gone out and all I had to navigate with was the single emergency light at the far end of the 1/4 mile tunnel. I leaned the basket of the bicycle into the wall of the dark tunnel and peddled as hard as I could towards the light. I entered the T building, grabbed a fire extinguisher and put out the fire.

Officially, I was reprimanded for entering an unsafe area without authorization. Off the record I was a hero for preventing further damage to the transmitters and the building. About a month later our team received commendation ribbons for getting the transmitters back on air sooner than anyone expected. It still makes me chuckle that I was reprimanded for doing something that set the stage for me to be rewarded as a direct result of those actions.

This made me chuckle:

"The correct answer to me then is the same height as her table saw".

Her table saw? I just bought her her first drill for Christmas. ;-)

As I said in my OP: "The person I have in mind is not a woodworker. She knows which end of a screwdriver to use, but she might not always use the right bit. ;-)"

IOW, she's just getting started with tools, home repairs, etc. The workbench is merely to give her a convenient, dedicated place to keep her tools, stir some paint, maybe fix a broken shelf (eventually).

As far as the user's height, she's barely 5'1", so kitchen cabinet height might be a little too tall.

I've decided to go with this style and I cut the front legs such that the workbench top will be at 32". If that is too short, all it will take is the removable of a few screws and 2 new front legs. The back will simply slide up the rear supports to match the new front height. Even easier would be to remove the top, add some height to the benchtop frame itself and screw the top back down.

Whatever you end up doing will be greatly appreciated... Good on you...

True, but my guess is adjustment will be made once, then, like book shelves, will not change over the next 100 years. I have never once considered any of my work tops as being too high, too low, or anything else.

I will say that my lathe cabinet may be a tad too low. I worried about it when I built it 50 years ago, but it seemed fine until very recently when my old, tired back decided the very slight amount of bend needed to turn stuff was going to make me wish for a tad more height. I did a lot of turning when I was young, and never noticed a problem, even after many hours of standing.

Now that I'm old and decrepit, I'm doing a good bit of turning again, just for fun. Now it's always a fight if my back or my legs will turn on me first.

But being old and decrepit, it should also be true that your spinal discs have shrunk so you have lost three inches of height, and you're just more stooped over in general, which should make your cabinet height just right. );

My gosh, you're pretty abusive to people offering you good advice, and asking relevant questions. It seems like you're the one who wants her to have a workbench, and then require her to use it, so long as it fits your needs.

Come on man, take what information others are providing to you, digest them without regurgitating them back to the responder first, and then ask more questions if needed. But don't be abusive or sound arrogant in your replies. You're the one who asked for help.....

Institutions with long history (often military or military related) tend to have the "Don't get hurt" rules that can impact safety and function - thus you get rewarded for getting reprimanded.

The TV transmitter I worked at was 50kW, running 10 amps at 5,000 volts to some big tubes - the filaments of each of the five tubes in the video transmitter required 5 volts at 185 amps. There were some strict rules about ALWAYS two people to do maintenance and ALWAYS using the grounding stick - wood, about 3ft long, with a metal cap connected to a 4ft cable of probably 4 gauge welding cable (for flexibility). Yes, there was a tool (similar to a screw jack) for unplugging the tubes when they needed to be changed.

No real difference when working with gas - know the safety rules and ALWAYS follow them. Plus gas has an odor, which electricity does not

- until it reaches corona discharge voltages and it starts making ozone.

I did followup maintenance a year after the licensed plumber installed the gas logs in the fireplace because there was a faint odor of gas. I found he had used a nipple he had at hand instead of the proper one - about a half inch longer in standard sizes - and the connection could not be properly tightened. New fitting, some thread sealant and 10 minutes had that as it should have been originally. Some 5-6 years later, it's still fine. I trust my electrical and gas work because I do things as though I would be sleeping in that house the night after doing the work.

Yeah, the chances of a water pipe leaking is very low, too, but I've had it happen once or twice.

i.e. "We have to cover our a$$ so we'll blame one of the victims." Very common in airline "incidents" too.

Affectionately known as a Dead Man Stick.

They can be used to pull the dead man off of the energized circuit that just killed him.

We used them to discharge the oil filled capacitors in our transmitters, the ones that required a shorting strap across the terminals when they were taken out of the equipment. If you didn't keep them shorted, the energy from the on-air transmitter could charge them up enough to hurt you pretty badly.

We also used the Dead Man sticks as a training aid when new people arrived on the station. We bring a hi-pot and a big capacitor to the mess hall, charge up the cap and then short it out. I've seen it blow the ground strap right out of the wooden rod. After the new guys quit sh*tting their pants we'd say "That's why you never go into the transmitter building without a transmitter tech."

In this case the gas company was found to be 100% at fault. No victims were blamed.

"The NTSB determines that the probable cause ? was Columbia Gas of Massachusetts? weak engineering management that did not adequately plan, review, sequence, and oversee the construction project that led to the abandonment of a cast iron main without first relocating regulator sensing lines to the new polyethylene main,? NTSB?s Managing Director Sharon Bryson said Tuesday. ?Contributing to the accident was a low-pressure natural gas distribution system designed and operated without adequate over-pressure protection.?

The workbench is done. My daughter drove at least 80 of the 100+ screws used. I took over when her hand started cramping up. ;-)

It turns out that my guess at a good height for her 5'-1" frame was just right, at l east for now. The work surface is at 32". She is pretty proud of her handy work.

knuttle <keith snipped-for-privacy@sbcglobal.net wrote in news:rv1015$jn0$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

It's been a long time since I've seen the saw dust explosion thing... IIRC, it takes a dust to air ratio so thick that you can't breath.

Puckdropper

DerbyDad03 snipped-for-privacy@eznet.net wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

Good job to you both!

Glad you took a picture of it clean. It will never be that way again. :0)

Puckdropper

And it takes actual dust, not the chips produced by most cutting tools.

A really big sander might do it but I would be very surprised if anything found outside of a large factory would.

Only lost 1/1/2" so far. If I stand for more than 3-4 hours, my left leg catches fire. My son, who plays a doctor on TV, says it's likely a pinched nerve in my back. That, in combination that it takes me 3 times longer to do anything leads me to smaller and smaller projects. Last thing I made was a bird feeder....

Is that cherry? What color are going to paint it. GOOD JOB!