Customer Review
198 of 205 people found the following review helpful
Don't be confused but the WM425 = Workmate 550 Project Center is the latest top of the line. The design of the table is excellent, but its minor construction flaws merit it only 4 stars. First, do consider the problems folks had with shipping damage. This is due to minimal padding in the Black&Decker box. If UPS ships this product without additional protection, there is a good chance it will get damaged. Second, at the store you'll have a choice of which box to select. Even at HomeDepot, some were badly bruised. My unit had a spring that popped off but was easily fixed. What took a little tweaking was the main clamping shelf was not installed parallel to the other boards. I fixed it by making sure the bolts were aligned properly and synched with the sprocketed drive belt, but if you read the assembly directions first, you might get away with fixing this by getting the handles to click, which disengages the sprockets and allows the cranks to be operated independently to fix a misalignment. After these minor fixes, the table worked flawlessly. The book 25 Essential Projects for Your Workshop describes some simple extensions you can build for the Workmate. Don't worry that the benchdogs are plastic, they work fine. You can build stronger ones if you like. The main drive mechanism is plastic, so don't over-torque your work. The only other glitch I couldn't fix was cosmetic. The neato grid did not line up across all three boards because the pre-drilled holes for the support blocks were a little off. I also didn't find that the vertical clamping strength to be very strong, but its adequate, and the one-hand operation works well and is slick. I plan to use my workmate to support some heavy table tools, and clamp some work that I route or carve.... Read more ›
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