Interesting cast iron table

Member Jim C. traded me this table for a couple things I had:



It's 2' by 5' and weighs about 1500 lbs. The underside of the top has heavy cast ribbing, similar to the way a surface plate is constructed. The slots in the top are not tee slots, just regular slots about 1/2" deep. The leg attachment is sort of odd, like maybe the legs weren't originally intended for the table, but Jim says he saw a couple more that were the same. Perhaps they all originally came out of the same factory in Buffalo.

Andy

Andy, What a cool table! Those victorian legs really set it off as something special. Look good by that really long L&S. Ed.

Very nice! I'd have a hard time deciding if I would clean it up and paint it or leave it as is.

A lot of the paint is loose, so I will probably knock it off with a hand wire brush, then oil the whole thing. I'm not going to repaint it.
I may also bolt a piece of plate to the top that is a couple inches wider each way, to give a lip to clamp stuff to. Depends if I can find a good deal on some 1" or 1 1/2" plate.
Andy

Scrape in the top?

What an elegant piece!

Make a great align boring bench.

Andy, how wide are the slots, when you plate the top you might beable to get 'T' slots. Nice table though, what a peice of art. Jay

I'd put it in my parlor - if I had one...

Andy,

Once again, Mr. Oder comes through with the best suggestion. Clean the whole table and paint it up really nice. Black with gold leaf. True up the top as a surface plate via Blanchard grinding and then scraping.

If you don' want to go the grinding & scraping route, have Starrett make you a custom-sized granite surface plate to fit the top.

After that, you put it in front of the sofa in your living room, so you can do your surface plate work while watching the TV.

(If you haven;t figured out by this time that this post is tongue-in-cheek, then I've done a really good job of it! )

John Ruth

I think an interesting question is what this table was made for; I don't think there have been any guesses yet and I would certainly like to know.

The more that I look at it, I think the legs aren't original to the top. They don't fit into the flat recesses at each end, and for some reason they are spaced away from the top with 1/4" plate. Their curved sections stick out past the corners of the top, which is odd as well.
The shelf below the top is a later addition to the whole thing- I may revamp it eventually.
I think the top was possibly a surface plate originally. The flat areas at each end (where the legs bolt on) would have been where the jack screws of it's original stand supported it. Seems like it should have had a support in the middle, though.
Jim has seen two more of these tables that are owned by a guy in Buffalo (where this one came from). My guess is that they were made in house at some facility in Buffalo. Perhaps they cast the legs themselves, to utilize old surface plates (though one wonders why they wouldn't have just scraped them back in).
The whole thing is a puzzle, but it makes a great bench. I've decided to add a piece of plate to the top that hangs over the edge, to make it easier to clamp work to the top.
Andy

Could it be a "machinery plate," i.e., a plate for laying out castings prior to machining? A machinery plate did not have to be as flat as a surface plate, typically having a planed finish. Challenge used to make machinery plates.

Portage layout devices used a similiar table with grooves on 10", 12" or whatever centers. I have never seen a portage table that small, however, and they all were slotted both directions.

Andy, thanks for the further thoughts. I think it's clear from your photograph that the bottom shelf is a later addition but it also seems to me that the legs may have been original. You give three possible clues why they may not have been but I can't tell from the photograph about the first two of these--ie 'don't fit into the recess ... ' and 'spaced away.' Regarding the third--ie 'the curved sections stick out past'--this seems to be perfectly appropriate to that style of cabriole leg: it should stick out past and 19th century styles would surely have had it this way.

From here I wouldn't rule out original.

i bet it was a machine
looks similar to some old old swasey turret lathe tables i had.
rest of machine would have bolted to slots
glad it found a home even if it is just a fillet of its former self.
better an amputee than an f-in vanguard casting full of holes and welded up to make a vibrating piece of crap

Here's a blow up of the leg attachment:



As you can see, the flat area that the leg bolts to is quite a bit longer than the leg's bolting surface. The corner of the leg does not line up with the machined corner of the top. You can also see the piece of plate steel that's between the legs and the top. I looked closer at this steel this morning, and the plate is there because the top doesn't have much material to bolt to in the area of the legs (ie. the legs bolt to the plate and the plate bolts to the top).
The legs are bolted to the plate with two small socket head cap screws each. These screws are definitely way newer than the legs or the top. They appear to be about 1/4" or so. The top doesn't really seem to have been designed to have legs bolted on. I would have expected a much more sturdy leg attachment system.
The legs themselves have a sort of forked "indexing" feature cast into the top, similar to what you see on old wood stove and claw foot tub feet. It's not utilized in this application. They just butt up to the plate and bolt on.
The legs are a heavy casting and have a large web reinforcement cast into their back sides, but they are still rather frail for supporting the top (thw whole package weighs around 1500 lbs., and most of that is in the top).
I will take some more pictures of it next week to illustrate this stuff better- right now I am on my way out of town for the weekend.
Andy

The legs are very similar to those on Queen Anne style gas stoves from the teens. Early stoves had cast iron legs, later ones, pressed steel.