Lab Benches

[revchris]

I'm in a love/hate relationship-sort-of-thing with the lab benches in one of the labs I'm remodeling at work.

It's one of the black epoxy-resin tops. Everybody who can afford them loves them because they're indestructible (me included). Personally, I hate them because i'm the one who has to drill holes in them (hammer drills and/or carbide hole-saws at one hole-saw bit per hole) and grind out the scratches (180, 240, 320, 400, 600-grit sandpaper followed by 6micron and 1 micron diamond paste).

Comments

[misteropinion.livejournal.com]

Hee, you are such a whiner. :-p

OK, I wish I had one of those tops.... :-(

Re:

[revchris.livejournal.com]

I have an 8"x32" piece of it (with a 4" backsplash) on the "packrat heap" in my office. If you've got a use for it, let me know and I'll bring it with this weekend. It can be cut down with a carbide blade in a circular saw (but don't plan on using the blade for much else afterwards, or so the carpenters tell me).

Re:

[misteropinion.livejournal.com]

I don't think that that's big enough for anything. How heat-sensitive is that? Too hard for a cutting board...

Re:

[revchris.livejournal.com]

From what we've done to them, you should be able to put almost any hot pot on it without significant damage (I know a bucket of 250°C oil didn't bother it at all). I've never tried to burn one intentionally, but, as it is a resin, it will eventually burn. I did a google and found some test data on epoxy resin tops. Apparently flame and red-hot crucibles aren't really a problem either.

Re:

[misteropinion.livejournal.com]

Wow, cool. OK, that might be a very cool thing to have. 32" is big, though. Hmmm...