Wood Magazine Mobile Workbench

This is actually something I built quite a few years ago. I built it when I was living in Ohio from plans published in Wood Magazine. It was part of a series called the Idea Shop. It appealed to me because my shop was in the garage. At the time, I hadn’t mounted the vise or drilled the bench dog holes. A divorce followed not long after and, as with such things, I downsized my life and my bench went into storage. Last year I cleaned out the storage locker (ten years of storage!) and was reunited with it. I decided that it was finally time to finish the bench. One small change I made was to drill a hole to mount a removable lamp. I’ve added an outlet box to the side. The light comes in handy because the lighting in my current shop is awful. There are two casters in the base and the handles make moving the bench easy. When the leaves are extended, adjustable feet on the bottoms of the swing-out legs make it possible to get the top level and stable. It’s surprisingly solid when trued up. Construction is of birch plywood with the top made of two pieces laminated together and edged with solid birch. When I was unloading it out of the truck into its new home, I lost my footing and the bench tumbled off the ramp and rolled three times end-over-end down the hill. Aside from a few small dents in the top, it survived without being damaged.

-- Altruism is, ultimately, self-serving