caster height

[Bruce Seidner]

Another trick/design that is overkill for this application, but might be of use to someone, someday: On the fixed leg end, there is a fixed stretcher somewhere around the midpoint of the legs. Then, there is a lower stretcher that has vertical sections attached to it, and this stretcher slides up and down on grooves/rails in the verticals and legs. There are two swivel casters attached to this lower "floating" stretcher.

And - the punch line - an inexpensive hand-operated hydraulic car jack is mounted to the movable stretcher. Pump the jack handle, and the jack's shaft pushes up against the fixed stretcher and the movable stretcher is forced down, causing the casters to lift the fixed legs off the floor. Very maneuverable with 2 fixed and 2 swivel casters, and extremely stable in operation.
.

This is what I have been working on but have had a hard time finding the right jacks. I don't do well drawing or conceptualizing. I usually need to have the parts in hand to see and feel how they work. Jacks make sense and I have plans for a cabinet that uses 4 scissor jacks that raise and lower either the casters or the cabinet itself which would be stable on the floor when down or free the wheels to roll when raised up and the weight on the casters. But I would prefer to use vice srews that sit in the table top and are flush below the top of the table of the cabinet. For instance I have been stumped trying to think of a way to make the stretcher or a leg raise and lower with a vice screw or a socket headed screw. The least expensive way to do this is to use a long .5" socket head screw. The head would be flush with the top of the table and a drill with a hex drive would raise and lower the leg or riser using the threaded rod that extended into a drilled out leg with a bolt or threaded sleeve secured in the leg. It would work the same way as a vice except I am unsure how to keep the screw in place. On a vice the screw has bolts behind and in front of the front plate. But on a table top the screw would have to remain flush and secured from beneath the top. When I think of a bolt beneath the table top I can't "see" how to prevent the head being cinched down tight or raising up above the surface of the table. I just want it to turn but can't see how to capture it so that it does not move up and down. I have been all over the McMaster catalog and can usually figure this out looking at the pictures of the parts. I don't see a way to capture the head of the screw unless I drilled out a hole for the socket head and then glued a plug over it with a hole for the hex wrench to fit down into the trapped head.

My floors are so uneven that I would like to have one adjustable leveling caster per corner and to be able to adjust them from the top. Or the casters would be attached to the frame and these stabilizing adjustable legs would push down to stabilize and level the cabinet or rise and allow the cabinet to rest on the casters. Sort of a reverse of your scheme but for an old home with uneven cement floors it would be great to have the legs adjustable and allow the casters to roll when moving and off the floor when the cabinet is in place and need to be stable And level.

How would one keep the head of the vice screw flush with the top and not rising or falling as it turned to raise and lower the stabilizing leg?

[Kent A Bathurst]

Bruce -

I think you may have gotten wrapped around the axle by trying to devise one solution to multiple, conflicting design points. You need to break your requirements down into separate tasks/functions and devise a solution for each. Here's one answer - someone else may well jump in with a better answer.

One requirement is to hold a bolt in place - up/down, to/fro - without engaging a threaded fastener/nut, but still allowing it to turn freely. The attachment shows a way to do that. You need a sleeve to hold the bolt in alignment to/fro, and you need nuts/washers to hold it in place up/down. Notice that the nuts do not engage as the bolt turns - they are locked against each other [with loctite for insurance], so that they hold the fender washers against the block, and the nuts rotate with the bolt while keeping the bolt in place vertically. My "sleeve" is a block of hardwood. You might be able to find some type of steel tube + flange to use instead.

Then at the "foot" end of the deal...I would have a stretcher very near the floor, or mounting blocks screwed to the legs. Get 4 leveling feet - the type where the post swivels for uneven surfaces. Put a tee-nut [same pitch and dia as the foot post] in the bottom side of the stretcher, and thread the foot's post up through the tee nut and all the way through the block/stretcher. Select your feet and your main bolts to have the same diameter and pitch. Use a rod coupling nut to splice the foot's post to the main bolt.

Abracadabra.

Turn the head of the main bolt, and it rotates freely in it's upper mounting block while the foot post is engaging the tee-nut in the foot mounting block.

I don't like doing work on top of swivel casters, nor on locking casters. This way, you can lift all four casters off the floor. I have heavy-duty leveling feet [from Grainger IIRC] under my bench, mounted with tee-nuts. Very stable. I don't recall what I paid for them, but I know I was a bit surprised at how much I had to pay. Cry once.

[Bruce Seidner]

Bruce -

I think you may have gotten wrapped around the axle by trying to devise one solution to multiple, conflicting design points. You need to break your requirements down into separate tasks/functions and devise a solution for each. Here's one answer - someone else may well jump in with a better answer.

One requirement is to hold a bolt in place - up/down, to/fro - without engaging a threaded fastener/nut, but still allowing it to turn freely. The attachment shows a way to do that. You need a sleeve to hold the bolt in alignment to/fro, and you need nuts/washers to hold it in place up/down. Notice that the nuts do not engage as the bolt turns - they are locked against each other [with loctite for insurance], so that they hold the fender washers against the block, and the nuts rotate with the bolt while keeping the bolt in place vertically. My "sleeve" is a block of hardwood. You might be able to find some type of steel tube + flange to use instead.

Then at the "foot" end of the deal...I would have a stretcher very near the floor, or mounting blocks screwed to the legs. Get 4 leveling feet - the type where the post swivels for uneven surfaces. Put a tee-nut [same pitch and dia as the foot post] in the bottom side of the stretcher, and thread the foot's post up through the tee nut and all the way through the block/stretcher. Select your feet and your main bolts to have the same diameter and pitch. Use a rod coupling nut to splice the foot's post to the main bolt.

Abracadabra.

Turn the head of the main bolt, and it rotates freely in it's upper mounting block while the foot post is engaging the tee-nut in the foot mounting block.

I don't like doing work on top of swivel casters, nor on locking casters. This way, you can lift all four casters off the floor. I have heavy-duty leveling feet [from Grainger IIRC] under my bench, mounted with tee-nuts. Very stable. I don't recall what I paid for them, but I know I was a bit surprised at how much I had to pay. Cry once.

Ken,

We are in fact singing off the same sheet of music. I want to be able to raise and lower the leveling feet independently because of my uneven floors and get completely off the casters. I ran an 18 foot bench down one wall of the garage to the back end corner. I set the wall supports level to earth gravity via a bubble level and then set the outside support beam level and square to the wall supports and one fixed leg for the one non-wall end of the outside beam. The distance from this outside support beam varies up and down as much as 4" at various points between the outside beam to the floor. One hears measure twice cut once. Well in my garage it is measure constantly and don't cut until you have checked the specific point at which you want to place a joint. There is not a level or square point to point anywhere. Old homes with hand laid block and likely wheel barrels of cement on the floor in individual sections does not add up to much consistency.

That said, I had hand drawn essentially the same sketch that you have provided. I had a less elegant sleeve and thank you for cleaning it up considerably for me. I will go to the hardware store and get the materials to create this science project and likely "get it" when I build a model of it. I think I can see how it is the cabinet that moves up and down on the rod now. Though it is funny. I added up the costs of the materials for this approach and it is likely more expensive than using scissor jacks. I have found that I can even dispense with the costs of the leveling feet because of one of those "tips" columns in a magazine that uses discarded hockey pucks as the base of the foot and a threaded rod or a bolt epoxied into it. But threaded rods etc, come to over $25 per leg. With the scissor jacks I loose more internal space, but get the advantage of the mechanical levers for what may end up being a heavy bench style cabinet. The smallest, least expensive I can find are 1 ton scissor jacks at about $20 a piece and could be mounted in all 4 corners. Using plain rods with eyelets to the front of the cabinet they can be turned with a drill. I am just more partial to the use of the socket head bolts and adjusting from the top. If there were more level floors and I did not need to move this cabinet about every time I wanted to use it all this fuss would be ludicrous. But the fact is every time I move it will require that it be checked for level and be re-leveled given my floors. I would prefer not to be on my hands and knees with a wrench going at leveling nuts on such a regular basis. I have also thought the heck with all the Rube Goldberg and just find the two places where this large cabinet may go in the garage, mark the four pads that would align with the legs and hammer them out, pour new concrete in these pads and know that the cabinet would be aligned and level when placed there. It is fortunate that this is a hobby. There is nothing practical about this. Thank you for your generosity of spirit and capacity to use a computer drawing program.

[Kent A Bathurst]

The scissors jacks would be too clumsy. Functional, but inelegant. You're gonna live with this for a long time, so make it fun. That's my approach, anyway. I like solutions that no one else would have been likely to come up with.

I liked your concept of the bench-top-level bolt heads........plus, based on how I felt this morning, I have to assume I had way too much "fun" at dinner with the neighbors last night, so your post gave me something to do to reboot the mental processes this morning........I'll have to make the rounds of the neighbors later on and see what I might have done/said that requires an apology...........

[Bruce Seidner]

I may be inventing a solution for an imagined problem.

My only experience with casters has been with what is on the bottom of a small Craftsman tool cab I own and the $50 mobile base I purchased from Woodcraft. Well, that and what I have seen at Borgs and Harbor Freight. I had some time this afternoon and went to our local Northern Tool and got to see some of the better casters they sell. There are these 5x2" and 6x2" scaffloding casters that lock, and I mean lock, both the wheel and the swivel. They are cast iron with thin poly-something tires and they are beast. So clearly there is another level of industrial caster that I have only seen in pictures. These things are inspiring. A large cast iron total locking caster is something to try first. For the uneven areas of my floor I will mark the spots that require a foot square pad of rubber covered hardboard or ply to raise the corner of the cabinet to level. I am going to need wheels in any event because my experiments driving the pallet jacks were not all that successful. I was banging into all kinds of things as I tried my hand at backing up, turning, and even going straight. I don't think they would give me a learners permit. Should I go the route of the top adjusted leveling feet I will be sure to share the photos and figure out a way to get some suitable beverage down to Atlanta so you can have something to toast with. Hair of the dog, and all after your celebratory evening last night. Thank you for your inspiring assistance.

[Steven Lee, NC]

I try and get the lowest wheel height for my tables on wheels for maximum storage space under the table. As long as they are specced for the weight.

[Brian Backner]

I have added casters to various tools and benches over the years with varying degrees of success. Larger wheels are definitely easier to move, especially as the tool gets heavier.

A couple of years ago, I got a really big planer - a Crescent P24. The thing is a beast, weighing somewhere north of 3,000#. I nearly choked when I saw what casters for such a creature would cost. So, I came up with another way.

I am tall at 6'3", so I've raised all my machines so they are comfortable for me while I work. I've found through trial and error that this may be anywhere from 4 to 6". So, what I did with the Crescent was to bolt it to two pieces of 4x4" x 1/4" thick walled steel tubing. I had also put some adjustable leveling feet at the four corners, giving me a total of about 5" under the planer's base - this is more than enough for standard pallet jack to fit under.

It worked so well that I'm converting all my machines over to similar bases. Some of the smaller machines will not accommodate a standard pallet jack (27" wide over the two legs), but they do make special narrow pallet jacks that are only 20" wide.

You can usually pick up pallet jacks off of Craigslist for $100 or so and I pick up all the steel tubing I use at the local salvage yard and paint it with Rustoleum Rusty Metal Primer and whatever top coat color I happen to have around. Considering that a set of casters for the Crescent would have cost me over $200, I consider myself ahead of the game.

Cheers,

Brian
Taxachusetts