Making a Welding Bench

[ross27]

Looking for a little bit of advice please!

I currently have one of these wooden topped Ridgid Workbenches, and i plan to bolt on a steel plate to the top to use it as a welding bench. (Which i can remove whenever i need to)

The dimensions are roughly 1070mm x 750mm.

What i want to know is:

Is mild steel the best to use?
What thickness of metal is best to use?
What price would i be looking to pay for it?

Any help would be appreciated! Never had to buy sheet metal before, so i would also appreciate it if anyone could advise where to buy. I stay in the south side of Glasgow.

 

[jonjoe]

yes mild steel make sure the table is strong enough and fit around 15mm thick or over to make it any good thinner would work but would bend if hit

 

[ross27]

yes mild steel make sure the table is strong enough and fit around 15mm thick or over to make it any good thinner would work but would bend if hit

The table is very sturdy, and the wooden top must be around 40mm thick.

I was thinking a 10mm piece bolted down at each corner would suffice. I am only going to be using stainless steel tube, so nothing too heavy to damage it.

 

[hotrodder]

Going from the pic i'd say that the table legs ain't man enough for the traditional 'properly' sturdy welding table that doubles as a surface for really beating steel into submission

1 square metre of 10mm steel plate weighs about 80kg. Thin sheet will be enough to prevent scorching/trashing the wood but will be prone to distorting from heat, albeit not so much of a deal with thin wall tube. A stainless or ally surface can be better for stainless work... overkill in some regards but impossible to contaminate the surface of stainless, ally is the cheaper of the two, will help with regards to scratching the work and is good heat sink but on the downside is more easily damaged. My table is an old cast iron surface plate, i just lay a sheet of ally on it for some jobs and one of these days i'll get around to making a proper slip over cover out of 3 - 5mm ally. My mobile table is just a chunk of wood with some 2mm steel screwed to it (origionally 1mm sheet but unsurprisingly that ended up properly wavy after welding some ally castings on it)