I like creating with my arms. I mainly experience growing beneficial objects out of wooden. Unfortunately, my self-designed and self-constructed garage 6 X 3 foot workbench has a bent to end up littered with miscellaneous “stuff”, and I locate myself at my wit’s stop trying to construct initiatives on a piece of plywood strung across two folding sawhorses. Not ideal, I will agree. I do respect the convenience of being able to take down and put away the components of my makeshift running floor. What I don’t like is that the running surface isn’t that stable and requires a separate set of clamps to keep the operating top to the sawhorses.

Casting about for something more strong than a hunk of plywood and a few adjustable clamps, I located there are a number of folding workbenches available on the market from manufacturers like Worx, Black and Decker, and offered at places like Home Depot, Lowes, and Harbor Freight. Their costs are various, but all of them have similar functions. I particularly like benches that fold flat, are without difficulty stored, have built-in adjustable “vises”, and might carry slight hundreds.

After studying the diverse offerings, I settled on an less expensive folding workbench from Harbor Freight.

After gaining knowledge of the various offerings, I settled on an inexpensive folding workbench from Harbor Freight. Price was a figuring out issue. You can see what I in the end offered with the aid of following the link embedded below in the Resource section below.

The folding workbench comes as a package. The essential factors are preassembled. I had to mount the two hand crank assemblies to the two fiberboard paintings floor, then mount the legs and their stiffening cross contributors that still double as device stations. Assembly went speedy; I only needed to deliver a Philips head screwdriver.

Unfortunately, the completed workbench doesn’t fold absolutely flat. But the workbench does function as I preferred: it’s a robust, portable workbench that I can without problems carry around the house or out into the lower back backyard to exercising my woodworking prowess. Adding some greater velocity clamps and a portable wood worker’s 6″ vise, and I’m true to go (my first venture became to make and fasten two ¼” wood dealing with portions to that 6″ carpenter’s vise’s steel jaws).

Upon searching on the workbench’s production, it got here to me that with some minor modifications, this workbench may be materially advanced. And that is what brought on me to write down this “How To” article to report what I did to my workbench.

There are 5 areas on that workbench that, with some minor rework, will materially improve its performance and probably make bigger its operating existence. None of those suggestions are vital, or even vital for the informal consumer. None of those tips are complicated to put into effect, but I locate that they will likely be worth the attempt as time passes.

Area #1: The “fold-flat” function.

When this workbench is assembled consistent with the directions, while folded, the handles lay pointing down the legs closer to the floor. By reversing the manner the legs are mounted (precisely reversed from the installation instructions), the handles now are on pinnacle of the folded bench, point away from the legs, and the legs do certainly absolutely fold flat! An clean fix.

Area #2: The hand-crank clamp lead screw adjustment.

I observed that the board it really is mounted to the hand-cranked lead screw that makes the work surface forums characteristic as a built-in vise, became loose, and flopped around because the handles had been cranked. To treatment this, I used a wrench to tighten the crank shaft attachment at the moveable paintings surface in order that there has been much less play as the unit is cranked. Don’t over tighten, or the board might not move at all!

Area #3: The hand cranked lead screw sheet steel stop clamp support.

Each of the hand crank lead screws goes through an stop plate that’s bent from the leg guide sheet metallic. If you appearance closely, you’ll note that the lead screw plate is secured to the sidewalls via sheet metal “ears” and two small dimples inside the sidewalls. That looks as if a capability supply of failure downstream: not anything prevents the sidewalls from separating and allowing the crank to turn out to be loose. My restoration? Simple: I set up a clamping and securing bolt thru the sidewalls just at the back of the end plate. To secure the sideplates and stopping them from spreading apart, approximately 1 inch from the quit plate, I drilled a ¼” clearance hollow via the 2 sideplates (that also mount the legs) and put a 1 ½ inch lengthy, ¼ -20 bolt with a washing machine and a locknut. Tightening the locknut makes the endplate securely clamped to the sidewall plates; this can prevent any tendency for that endplate maintaining the leadscrew and cranking handles from coming free through the years.