Adjustable support for benchtop machines

While some of my brethren here have shops large enough to own every large machine their budget (or wife) allows, alas, I am not so fortunate. I work out of a 2 car garage, and need to move my machines back to their holding areas at night to allow the cars to be parked. As a result, some of my machines such as my bandsaw and drill press are benchtop models. Please cue the violins…

Working with long stock can be dicey without some additional support, and I’ve become tired of my usual method of stacking various items around the shop to the right height. Not to mention that the cat becomes annoyed when I take his scratch pads, which happen to stack up perfectly. So, I designed an adjustable support to alleviate said problems.

It’s a simple design that starts with a sandwich of 3 plywood layers. I know walnut plywood is ridiculous for shop fixtures but that’s what I had. The outer layers have a 1 1/4” wide groove cut on the tablesaw, and the inner layer pieces align with those cuts to produce a square hole. The legs are sized slightly smaller to move up and down easily, and held in place with knobs that go into threaded inserts. The bottom base piece is sized to be easily clamped to my bench. And yes, before you question my sanity, I did edge band the plywood base because I just couldn’t stand the hideously ugly edges. Yes, I know it’s only a shop fixture. At least I didn’t hide the screws in the top support with wood plugs, although that was seriously considered. My therapist says that with only 20 or 30 more sessions, I might avoid these problems in the future. 

Overall, it works great. And Ziggy the cat is much happier.