Homemade Mini PVC Bench Drill
Well being a DIY enthusiast PVC is the material of choice for me in almost all of my DIY Projects. Due to the flexibility, reliability and how easily this material is available in countless shapes sizes and colors this material is available in it helps me a lot to get most of my projects done.
So In this Instructable we are going to built a small DIY workbench or table completely out of a 20 feet PVC pipe, a plywood sheet and a whole bunch of rivets.
The only material required for this Project is:
A 20 feet length of 4inch diameter PVC pipe
A sheet of 3mm plywood
A handful of 3.2mm aluminum rivets
etc.
First of I started with slicing the PVC pipe in small lengths so that I can easily cut the required parts without dangling with the whole length on the miter saw bed.
After slicing the pipe in smaller considerably lengths, I started off by cutting the legs for the Table. There are going to be four of them, each measuring 28 Inch in length.
Note:
To make sure that each leg is exactly identical in length as compared to the other ones, I have made a temporary jig using a spare piece of 3mm plywood sheet held in place using a clamp on the miter saw table. This allows me to limit the cutting length on the miter saw and produces identical length almost each and every time.
Now here comes the most intense part of this built. As per my plans I have to cut down 29 slices each having a height of nearly 3.5 inches. So again I have set down the jig as eleborated in the previous step to make the overall process fast and accurate.
I have cut down 29 pieces out of the PVC pipe and arranged them in order along with the legs to have an idea about the feel of the actual dimension of the table.
I decided to keep the size of the table such that it has a maximum of 7 PVC pipes slices in columns and having 5 rows. The legs of the table go to the corner of the table and the PVC slices come in-between them. The arrangement is made such that the middle slices are arranged in hexagonal formation thus touching 6 corners along with their neighboring PVC slices.
This formation seems to be the strongest amount the rest possible formation, more likely a honeycomb type formation.
To close bottom end of the PVC pipe I decided to go for a 3mm plywood sheet.
First off I sliced down the sheet of plywood into smaller sheets so that I can sandwich three to 4 sheets at the same time and cut down the circular pieces for closing the ends of the pipes.
One easy way is using a circular saw but the problem with this tool is that it leaves an unwanted hole in the middle of each piece which is not favorable in this case so I decide to go with a jig saw..... yes a bit more efforts but that seem worthwhile...
I cut down nearly 40 pieces using this technique and kept the diameter a bit larger which will be the latter sanded down ensuring a smooth flawless finish.
As I have cut down most of the parts for the table, so during the process they seem to get some stains.
Well the best part about PVC is its flexibility so I decided to wash these parts which ended up giving each part a clean look.
I decided to go with the original look of the PVC parts in this project, no paints nothing .... just the way PVC is .... which literally is quiet nice when neat and clean.
After washing each part I let them to dry in a clean place.
After cleaning the PVC parts I started gluing the end caps to each leg as well as each clice for the table top using some super glue to fasten the process and give each piece a cleaner look.
Each piece is properly glued ensuring that it won't come apart under some weight.
As in the begging I kept the end caps a bit larger than the PVC pipe, so followed by the gluing process I have done a lot of sanding to ensure a smooth and perfectly round finish.
First I have sanded the larger edges using a file and then later a fine finish is given using a belt sander.
After a hole lot of sanding I ended up getting a bunch of nicely finished parts ready to put together.
Followed by the sanding process is the staining for wooden parts. It gives the wooden parts a classic look and weather proof them as well.
After the varnish is dried the wood PVC combo looks amazing.
Initially I was planning to glue all the parts together with some super glue, but at this stage I decided to rather jump to a more reliable method of joining everything together and ended up finding the use of a whole bunch of aluminum rivets that are laying around in my workshop.
As the structure is a hexagonal type so I have to ensure that each piece have got the right number of holes and most importantly at the exact place.
Again to speed up the whole process I have made a jig to point the holes on each piece of PVC using a card sheet. I carefully pointed six equally spaced points on the card sheet by dividing the circumference of the PVC pipe into six parts. Later I formed a ring of the card sheet using some tape.
Homemade Mini PVC Bench Drill
Well being a DIY enthusiast PVC is the material of choice for me in almost all of my DIY Projects. Due to the flexibility, reliability and how easily this material is available in countless shapes sizes and colors this material is available in it helps me a lot to get most of my projects done.
So In this Instructable we are going to built a small DIY workbench or table completely out of a 20 feet PVC pipe, a plywood sheet and a whole bunch of rivets.
The only material required for this Project is:
A 20 feet length of 4inch diameter PVC pipe
A sheet of 3mm plywood
A handful of 3.2mm aluminum rivets
etc.
First of I started with slicing the PVC pipe in small lengths so that I can easily cut the required parts without dangling with the whole length on the miter saw bed.
After slicing the pipe in smaller considerably lengths, I started off by cutting the legs for the Table. There are going to be four of them, each measuring 28 Inch in length.
Note:
To make sure that each leg is exactly identical in length as compared to the other ones, I have made a temporary jig using a spare piece of 3mm plywood sheet held in place using a clamp on the miter saw table. This allows me to limit the cutting length on the miter saw and produces identical length almost each and every time.
Now here comes the most intense part of this built. As per my plans I have to cut down 29 slices each having a height of nearly 3.5 inches. So again I have set down the jig as eleborated in the previous step to make the overall process fast and accurate.
I have cut down 29 pieces out of the PVC pipe and arranged them in order along with the legs to have an idea about the feel of the actual dimension of the table.
I decided to keep the size of the table such that it has a maximum of 7 PVC pipes slices in columns and having 5 rows. The legs of the table go to the corner of the table and the PVC slices come in-between them. The arrangement is made such that the middle slices are arranged in hexagonal formation thus touching 6 corners along with their neighboring PVC slices.
This formation seems to be the strongest amount the rest possible formation, more likely a honeycomb type formation.
To close bottom end of the PVC pipe I decided to go for a 3mm plywood sheet.
First off I sliced down the sheet of plywood into smaller sheets so that I can sandwich three to 4 sheets at the same time and cut down the circular pieces for closing the ends of the pipes.
One easy way is using a circular saw but the problem with this tool is that it leaves an unwanted hole in the middle of each piece which is not favorable in this case so I decide to go with a jig saw..... yes a bit more efforts but that seem worthwhile...
I cut down nearly 40 pieces using this technique and kept the diameter a bit larger which will be the latter sanded down ensuring a smooth flawless finish.
As I have cut down most of the parts for the table, so during the process they seem to get some stains.
Well the best part about PVC is its flexibility so I decided to wash these parts which ended up giving each part a clean look.
I decided to go with the original look of the PVC parts in this project, no paints nothing .... just the way PVC is .... which literally is quiet nice when neat and clean.
After washing each part I let them to dry in a clean place.
After cleaning the PVC parts I started gluing the end caps to each leg as well as each clice for the table top using some super glue to fasten the process and give each piece a cleaner look.
Each piece is properly glued ensuring that it won't come apart under some weight.
As in the begging I kept the end caps a bit larger than the PVC pipe, so followed by the gluing process I have done a lot of sanding to ensure a smooth and perfectly round finish.
First I have sanded the larger edges using a file and then later a fine finish is given using a belt sander.
After a hole lot of sanding I ended up getting a bunch of nicely finished parts ready to put together.
Followed by the sanding process is the staining for wooden parts. It gives the wooden parts a classic look and weather proof them as well.
After the varnish is dried the wood PVC combo looks amazing.
Initially I was planning to glue all the parts together with some super glue, but at this stage I decided to rather jump to a more reliable method of joining everything together and ended up finding the use of a whole bunch of aluminum rivets that are laying around in my workshop.
As the structure is a hexagonal type so I have to ensure that each piece have got the right number of holes and most importantly at the exact place.
Again to speed up the whole process I have made a jig to point the holes on each piece of PVC using a card sheet. I carefully pointed six equally spaced points on the card sheet by dividing the circumference of the PVC pipe into six parts. Later I formed a ring of the card sheet using some tape.
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