prep box build

[hadrosauridae]

OK prep gurus, I come with a question.  What is (or is there) a preferred height for the table top a blast-box sits on? 

 

My HF sandblasting cabinet has served me well for my micro abrasion preps, but the time has come that I need a single work station I can both scribe and blast in.  I'm going to have to tear down my current work bench anyway to do this, and I think it is a little too high.  

 

So do you have a preference for the height?  

[Ludwigia]

10 hours ago, hadrosauridae said:

So do you have a preference for the height?

 

Higher than my knees when sitting and on a level with my bent elbows.

[Kane]

Just as Roger says above.  

For comfort, it should be similar to eating dinner at the dinner table, drawing at a desk, or typing with good posture at a computer. 

 

Do you use a microscope on a boom arm? If so, not too low so you don't have to crane your neck down too far to look into the eyepieces, but enough  clearance for it to swing across the glass. The arm holes should be just around or slightly higher than the 45 degree angle of the arm. The working distance between the object and what you see in the scope gets adjusted by the use of a Barlow lens, and different sized risers in the box. 

 

So maybe get the height dimensions of the scope component that would be swinging over the box, and then take a measurement of you sitting comfortably at a table from the table top surface to the top of your shoulder, subtract the scope height, and you have the height measurement for the box. 

[Ptychodus04]

I agree with the comments above. :-) If you're sitting in a standard height chair (not a stool) while you work, your bench should be 30" tall. You want to build your box so the top of the box is no more than inch or so taller than the working distance of the microscope. A wall mounted boom really makes microscope positioning easy.

 

I have a slightly different setup than most preppers. I like to stand while I work, so my bench is taller. I have an adjustable height bench which allows me to adjust the working height based on the thickness of the specimen I'm working on. This lets me maintain a comfortable position regardless of the size of the specimen. Also, I work on pieces that are very small and large slabs. My box is open on the bottom with foam weatherstripping around the perimeter. This allows me to set the box on the bench for smaller pieces and on top of the larger slabs when needed. Since the working area under a microscope is very small, my box is only around 14" square and 7.75" tall (I used 1x8 pine). This puts the microscope only 1/4" above the glass when working on flat slabs. If I'm holding a small piece, the microscope can be raised easily on the boom arm.

 

I like the wall mount for the boom because it eliminates compounded vibration as seen through the microscope. You always shake the bench a bit while working, isolating the microscope from the bench takes additional scope movement out of the equation.

[hadrosauridae]

3 hours ago, Kane said:

.....

 

So maybe get the height dimensions of the scope component that would be swinging over the box, and then take a measurement of you sitting comfortably at a table from the table top surface to the top of your shoulder, subtract the scope height, and you have the height measurement for the box. 

 

This is one of my issues I'm trying to plan for.  I dont have a scope YET, but I will at some point.

[Allosaurus]

10 hours ago, hadrosauridae said:

 

This is one of my issues I'm trying to plan for.  I dont have a scope YET, but I will at some point.

If you're planning to build a work bench, you can always build a section that drops down. Not sure how to explain it very well, but when I did my geology degree at uni we had these tables in the lab with a section that dropped about 4 or 5 inches (from what I remember) when we wanted to use our microscopes. That alleviated the change in height problem, and when we were finished we just flipped that part of the table back up so it was perfectly flat again.