Tony- thanks for all the kind words

Not sure if you’ve already been testing mixes, or maybe you’ve worked with EG for a million years and I have nothing useful to say here, but let me trumpet opinions into the void and see what comes back hahaha

I found that 11% by weight was about the lowest epoxy percent I could do without starting to get more voids. Before HEAVY vibration with a vibrating table it is like damp sand and rocks (and extremely stiff to mix), it barely looks to have any epoxy on it at all. It only gets harder to mix the aggregate and epoxy together as the epoxy percentage drops, so 11% was about all my poor hands could take lol.

I was going to just epoxy the same cross section of steel onto the bottom of my lathe as it has on the top, but I think your tensioning rod idea is much better. I can’t make a 48in deep hole though, so I may cut slots for threaded rods in the bottom of the base, using a angle grinder diamond wheel.