Felix Gomez Martin sent me, from Seville, the photos of his multifunction cutting table where he installs, depending on the need he has during the realization of his carpentry projects, a hand circular saw, a milling machine or a jigsaw.
As is clear from the photos, he put a lot of work into its manufacture and spared no detail, but one of the things he put a lot of effort into was installing aluminum rails with aluminum profiles sliding inside. And if you have looked for aluminum profiles that fit perfectly one inside the other (I have looked for them), maybe like me and Felix you will not find profiles that fit one inside the other even if you combine all the ones that fall into your hands. But Felix was determined that there had to be a way and he found a solution:
The solution was to buy a 35 mm flat profile and 10×10 mm square profiles. I put one on each side riveted to the underside of the flat profile, which is glued to the table. Therefore, the guide running along the rails is a “U” of 15 millimeters (35-10-10=15mm). All in aluminum as you can see in the pictures. More than anything it was a stubbornness of mine to do it in aluminum, until I found this solution, but not before giving more turns “than a dog to lie down” looking everywhere for something that fit and that did not exist anywhere.
When I first saw the photos I thought that it could not be easy to rivet the square profiles to the aluminum plate, but it seems that with a little patience and doing things little by little the result is quite satisfactory.
As to whether it was complicated to rivet it, I will tell you that it was not, but laborious. To fix the square profiles to the plate, the best and easiest way to adjust them so that there is no slack is to first fix them with a little contact glue and then, when dry, start riveting. To make the rivet heads flush with the bottom surface of the aluminum plate, I made the corresponding countersinks.
