Acorn Table Fixtures

I just found myself a really nice 5' x 5' Acorn table that was used at an IBM plant for assembly lay out only, no welding was ever done on it...until now.
I digress. Would any of you have suggestions on a source for fixtures, hold down clamps, blocks etc? Is Weldsale the only gig in town? I have been searching craigslist to no avail. I cant believe I lived without one of these tables for the last 30 years.

What kind of tooling and fixtures do you need that you can not make? I use these platten tables daily and most of the "tooling" is very simple. Most common that I use are hold down dogs and I have some tapered square pins I forged to fit into the holes to slide parts up against. Another thing I use often is a large square I made from angle iron 3x3 that can either be dogged to the table flat or with one leg sticking up.

defdes said:

I just found myself a really nice 5' x 5' Acorn table that was used at an IBM plant for assembly lay out only, no welding was ever done on it...until now.
I digress. Would any of you have suggestions on a source for fixtures, hold down clamps, blocks etc? Is Weldsale the only gig in town? I have been searching craigslist to no avail. I cant believe I lived without one of these tables for the last 30 years.

Click to expand...

I have several of the Hold down dogs if your interested?

Kevin

Hey, defdes, fellow Vermonter--I live in Bristol.

I think you make your own or find some old ones.

But here is a catalog of the current supplier of them, the ones who say they took over from Acorn:

https://www.weldsale.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Weldsale_Catalog_2018_interim_vv2.pdf

The Acorn company was in Philadelphia, where I am from. The current dealers, interestingly, thank and mention the Acorn business owners on their web site, saying this

"Acorn Iron & Supply Company Inc. (acroniron.com) has ceased supplying their brand of Acorn Platens, Stands, and Tools; their Owners no longer have offerings in the Platen Marketplace. We competed with Acorn Iron & Supply Inc. for about 50 years. We are grateful to the contribution that the Tabas Family has brought to the welding industry and we wish them continued success with their many and varied business enterprises. Weldsale is a manufacturer of welding platens with 55+ years of experience and would be happy to help serve your needs."

I mention this not because I am pushing their products but because I have known the family mentioned by them who started and ran the Acorn iron business all my life, most notably because I have a high school classmate prominent in that family (he also has a Vermont house, by the way). I have in this room in which I type self-published biographies of two of those family members, both of whom, now long dead, I knew. The elders in my family, also in the iron and the real estate business, knew them even better, and we were fairly near neighbors to some of the.

I'm sorry i didn't save for myself some of the Acorn tables in my family's business when it closed down in 1985, they had many. Here is a photograph of my father--at about age 70 or just a little less, in the red shirt, walking with another iron works executive, in the last shop, with a fairly large sized platen table in front of them (if I still know how to attach photographs):

Bessy and weldsale make various table clamps for the acorn style. They are pretty simple and could be made by cutting up some harbor freight clamps and doing some knurling. Bessys fit our tables at work better and have a more aggressive knurl that holds into the table holes better...
Be careful using pound in style dog clamps, they can damage the edges of the square holes. If your table is in super nice shape you might not want to use them...

Thanks for the replies and an interesting yarn from my fellow Vermonter.
I was looking for clamps and hold downs...but was really just being a bit lazy and not wanting to purchase 20' of 1 1/2" bar stock, but I will likely craigslist some C clamps and fab my own.

I have a variety of sizes of dogs and the 1 1/4" dia ones are the easiest to use. I have tables with 1 5/8" and tables with 1 3/4" holes and they work good in both sizes I would go with 1 1/4 or at least make one before commiting to 20' of 1 1/2"