3-legged scrollsaw table

I was talking with Pat Roberson about scrollsaws and the topic of vibration came up.  I told her about reading, somewhere on the Internet, that a 3-legged table was superior to even a heavy workbench as a support for a scrollsaw.  This discussion suggested an experiment.  You run your scrollsaw on your bench and then put it on a concrete floor and run it there.  You note the difference in vibration.

At the time I was dubious but being mostly an idiot when it comes to understanding harmonic dampening, I did the experiment.  Shazaam, said me, there is a big difference.  This motivated me to spend an hour building a 3-legged bench to see if that was also something more than a myth.  Shazaam some more, said I.   My 3-legged table mostly eliminated any notion of vibration from my Dremel scrollstation.

Anyways, I suggested to Pat that she build one.  She asked for a photo of mine.  Here it is:

You’re right…it’s not much.  Afterall, I didn’t even think it would work when I built it.  But it works so well that I don’t see any reason to redo it.  A couple things to note.  First, the entire frame is created by hunks of 2×4 and everything is screwed together with deck screws.  I’d guess it’s about $3 worth of the stuff.

The top is 3/4″ plywood and I took one of the rubber floor tiles you see on the floor, cut it to size, and put it between the saw and the table.  The saw is bolted to the table using 10-24 bolts (3 of them).  Note also that I screwed a power bar to the back leg of the table.  I plug the saw an an airbrush compressor into it and normally this table is shoved into a space between two benches.  I have a footswitch to turn it on/off.

Because Pat is a buddy, I spent a few minutes and drew up the table in SketchUp to provide plans for her.  You can grab the plans here if you want.  Here’s a graphic from that drawing.  Nothing fancy but the main dimensions are there so you can cut up your 2×4 and have a bench ‘real soon.’  The 24″ height was determined by my size and height of my shop butt-holder.

Cheers — Larry

larry@woodnbits.com