The Easiest Way to Make Your Bench Mobile

I’ve always resisted adding wheels or a mobile base to my workbenches. They can be complex, in the way of your feet and take some fiddling to engage and disengage.

So we’ve always put our benches up on furniture dollys when we needed to move them.

However, readers have pestered me for years now for ideas on how to make their benches mobile. Most of these people work in a garage workshop where they need to have everything on wheels so it can be pushed aside for the spouse’s car.

They never take me up on my first solution, divorce.

So I offer this idea. I’ve never seen it before, but I’m sure someone, somewhere has done it already. It’s based on a “Shortcut” we published years ago as a way to raise and lower your workbench. But instead of swinging a big block of wood under the feet to raise the bench, I decided to put four 3″ casters there.

I attached two 3″ casters each to two 1-1/2″ x 5″ x 24″ lengths of 2 x 6 that I trimmed up. Then I attached two unswaged utility hinges to each 2 x 6. One hinge for each leg. I had to saw out a 3/8″ x 3/8″ rabbet on the corner of each leg to receive the barrel of the hinge. Then I screwed the hinges to the legs.

I did this to Megan’s bench in about an hour today (that will teach her to leave the office to get a pedicure). Hope she likes it.

The video below shows just how fast this system works. In less than 30 seconds I put the bench up on its wheels and then down again onto the floor.

– Christopher Schwarz

Still More Workbench-related Links and Resources

– “Build an 18th-century Workbench” a new DVD with Christopher Schwarz. Buy this now at the pre-order price and I might win beer money. Seriously.

– See a reader’s solution to a mobile workbench that I posted here. Very cool. A little complicated for my taste.

– My DVD “The Workbench” (Lie-Nielsen Toolworks) shows you how to modify your workbench to improve its workholding abilities.