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I love my go bar deck, but as much as I love it, I was able to significantly improve it yesterday with a minor tweak that some of you might find useful.

I use the go bar deck to both glue braces to plates and glue plates to rims. The lower deck and upper deck are separated by four ¼” threaded rods inside four pieces of thick wall plastic conduit:



Rather than build a booster seat for when I want to use the deck for gluing braces on plates, I opted to design 4” tall spacers made of the same conduit, which you can see in the above photo. When I am gluing plates to rims, the spacers go below the upper deck. When I am gluing braces to plates, the spacers go above the upper deck.

The downside to that design was that I had to take the upper deck off in order to raise it or lower it (spacers below or spacers above the upper deck, respectively).

I fixed that problem by replacing the conduit spacers with some 2” diameter poplar dowel stock I had sitting around for some project or another. You can buy it at Lowe’s. It is probably meant for table legs. The big difference between the plastic conduit and the dowels is that I cut notches in the dowels, so that I don’t have to take the upper deck off in order to raise or lower it.

Anyway, here are photos of the deck with the poplar spacers. First, with the upper deck in the upper position:



Next, with the upper deck in the lower position:



Here are close-ups of the poplar spacers:









These were easily made in a few minutes. Cut to length on the table saw, drill the holes on the drill press, and cut the notches on the bandsaw. Easy peasy.

I can now change the position of the upper deck in less than a minute.

Cool!

Nice!

I started to make spacers but ended up with this because I just happened to have some appropriately sized scrap around.

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Simple, quick, I like it.

What I really like about the way you’re using the spacers is by putting them between the upper deck and thumb screws when it’s in the low position. I don’t use spacers in mine, but have thumb screws on both sides of the upper deck. It takes forever to change the height. I’ll be borrowing this.


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What an elegant and simple solution. Thank you for sharing.

James--

The other nice thing for most decks that use all-thread rod is that you can use just about any type of scrap wood for the spacer. A 2x2 or a 2x4 cut in half would do fine. Just cut four identical lengths, notch them out, and Bob's your uncle. I only used the large dowels because I had them on hand.

This really will save you some time. Loosen each upper star knob by a turn, take out the spacers, raise or lower the upper deck, put the spacers back, and re-tighten the four top star knobs.

I'm glad this is useful to some folks!

One nice thing about the spacers is that they are easier to store went you don't want to use them although I do like not having to touch the rods at all anymore

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

The way I use them, there’s no storing the spacers. They are always in use.

Even better.

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I also like that booster seat, Steve. Do you secure it to the deck, or does it just stay put when I use? I have removable studs in the lower deck of my deck that match up with holes in the bottoms of my dishes. I felt that I needed these, because the dishes moved a bit without them.

Hey Don, the spacer just sits in place. In the photo it is sitting on my radius dish so you can see it is close to the same size so it's very stable. It's funny, I was getting ready to brace a back and thinking that I really didn't want to change the height again on the top of my go-bar deck. Been meaning to do something about that for a while and it was a slow day. I looked around in my scrap for material to make some spacers but didn't see anything convenient when I came across some strips of baltic birch plywood that were leftover from some cabinet work I did in the house. A few minutes on the saw plus a little glue and a pin nailer and I had my 'booster seat'.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Why didn't I think of that! My deck is much like yours. Modifications will be happening. Thanks

I made my "booster seat" 4" tall. Too tall. I need to cut an inch off the bottom.

This is a great idea. Thanks for the idea.

Just wanted to bring some attention to this type of handle. Not sure how readily available they are, but i purchased some for our lab shakers.
It has a thread type that allows it to travel freely up and down the length of the rod.

May prove useful to someone.

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Wake up and smell the rosewood!

I use brass speed nuts similar to that I bought from LeeValley. Still like the OPs solution better.https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/ha ... speed-nuts

Brilliant!
I will definitely be modifying my deck with these spacers.
Thanks Don!!!

I had thought about all that nut adjustment and it all seemed like such a pain. This genius. I love this idea and I'm going to make one exactly like it.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

I'm so glad a number of people find this idea useful!

I just whipped my deck into somewhat better shape. This is a variation on a theme, so I hope Don doesn’t mind. After trying this, I do believe his approach is still more time-efficient.

I used quick-release star knobs from Rockler. A bolt at each end governs the range of travel along the threaded rod. When I want to glue the top or back to the rim, I’ll slide the knobs up to the upper bolt. When I want to glue braces, I’ll slide back down. A similar bolt in the lower position (covered by the knobs in these pictures) limits the range of downward travel.




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