Hobbies And Interests
Things You'll Need
Instructions
Mark four lengths of square steel tubing to the length you need -- two 2-feet long and two 1-foot long, for example. Use a white, wax pencil, marking a straight line where you will cut the pieces. The two longer pieces will serve as the vertical members of a rectangular frame, and the two shorter pieces will serve as the horizontal supports.
Cut the steel tubing with a plasma cutter or other steel cutting device along the marks you made. Clean up the edges with an angle grinder, lightly beveling the edges you cut.
Clamp the four frame members together, and then tack them in place with several spot welds -- just one or two trigger-pulls with your MIG welder to hold the materials in place. Once the whole frame is positioned correctly and the joints are square, weld the seams together at each corner, alternating corners to reduce heat warpage of the press frame.
Cut a piece of square tubing to span horizontally inside the frame. Clamp the piece anywhere within the frame. It should be 1/16th of an inch smaller than the frame opening, so that it can slide up and down, inside the frame. Weld two flat tabs of heavy 1/4-inch flat bar to the each end of the deck, so that they grip the vertical members of the frame like a rail. This piece should act as a sliding deck or elevator, moving up and down the frame.
Position the deck vertically in the frame, and then drill holes through the deck tabs and through the frame members, so that you can bolt the deck in place wherever you want it within the frame. Drill both sides, then slide bolts through the holes, and fasten them with nuts. You can add indexed holes -- additional holes at increments of one inch, for example -- to the vertical members to make the deck adjustable. You can remove the bolts, slide the deck to a new height and then bolt the deck to any of the indexed holes.
Fasten the bottle jack either to the top of the frame or to the top of the deck. Some bottle jacks will have mounting holes that allow you to bolt them in place. Other bottle jacks may require you to weld mounting tabs to the deck or frame to hold the jack in place. Four 1/4-inch by 1-inch steel tabs welded on four sides of the bottle jack to keep it from sliding side to side will work. You can bend the inch-long tabs to match the radius of the bottle jack for an even more secure fit.