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Workmate: a good idea, value engineered (just a rant, really)

X-FaceVon: Jon Fairbairn (jon.fairbairn@cl.cam.ac.uk) [Profil]
Datum: 07.11.2009 12:40
Message-ID: <wf4op6a7h1.fsf@calligramme.charmers>
Newsgroup: uk.d-i-y
Twenty or thirty years ago, I had some cause to use a workmate.
A housemate had one; it seemed to do what I used it for, though
I didn't do anything challenging with it. It had a decent
plywood top with some fairly dull finish on it.

Something like ten or fifteen years ago, my Dad bought me a
workmate as a present. Using it more extensively, like most
people one of the first things I noticed was that there isn't
enough room between the front of the top and the metal cross-bar
to get clamps in. I imagine this fault was present in the old
version too (there's a certain amount of irritation with the
struts underneath fouling things protruding down from the top,
but I think that's an inevitable consequence of a folding
design). But I also noticed that the top on this one was made of
veneered chipboard (I thought "that's going to fall to bits if
it gets damp". I'm careful, so it hasn't got damp yet, but would
rather it had been a bit more expensive¹ [or not had the extra
"feature" -- a board clamping facility that doesn't work
terribly well] and had a proper top). Then I found that the
flanged nuts that fit the back top to the rails protruded too
far below the plastic runner. This made that part of the top
wobbly, which is annoying, but a half-hour or so of boring the
plastic got them to fit so that the tops didn't tip up too much
when something was clamped between them.

Now, five or so years later, her Dad bought one for my partner.
This is ostensibly the same model as mine, but this time the top
is made of something that looks more like ply. Alas, on closer
inspection it's some sort of premboard, and after only a year or
so indoors, it has *warped* so that the top surface is convex.
This makes it hard to clamp anything (anything flat, at least),
an annoyance compounded by the fact that the finish is now
something so glossy that things slip off it at the slightest
provocation. I admit that I like shiny things, in their place,
but the top of a workbench has no call to be slippery².

I won't hear it said that workmates are useless, though. I have
a friend who doesn't do that much DIY, but his workmate sees use
at least once a year. With the top opened up just so and those
orange plastic pegs positioned in the correct holes (this is the
only use I've seen for the slanted side of the peg), it makes a
good stand for a firkin of beer.


[1] It would be nice if the "top of the range" model was much
the same as the next one down, but built out of better
materials. The market doesn't work like this.

[2] There are solutions to this (and the other issues), I know.
But if you buy a workbench, you expect it to work as a bench. I
suppose shinyness sells.

--
Jón Fairbairn                                 Jon.Fairbairn@cl.cam.ac.uk
http://www.chaos.org.uk/~jf/Stuff-I-dont-want.html  (updated 2009-01-31)
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