#HTE

Les Hastings’ Incredible Folding Portable Workbench

Having a bench-on-bench can be useful when you need to get the work up higher, or if you’ve got a bad back, as designer/builder Les Hastings does. He finds them useful in his shop in Wichita and is now on his third design, which folds up for travel or storage:

“Here’s my latest project, a small expandable bench.” “It’s made out if beech, wenge, holly, Red River gum burl, steel and aluminum.” “Closed it measures 3 ½” x 11 ½" x 22 ¾ long.“ "Fully open it measures 11 ½” wide x 12" tall x 38 ¾" long.“ "The finish is Waterlox.” “There aren’t any plans. I built and designed this as I went along. Thanks for checking it out!”

He also machines the hardware himself (except from the pop-up bench dogs, which are the magnetic ones from Lee Valley). Here are a couple of them under construction with fittings he made from brass:

Here’s a look at the hinge mechanism coming together:

Incredibly, self-taught Hastings designed this without putting pen to paper. “I never draw, I just design as I go, do it in my head,” he says. “That’s just how I roll.”

During a brief chat, I asked him how the bench came about. “This is actually the third [design] I’m on,” he says. The first one came about when he “took a three-day class with Steven Latta on how to build one of these little benches. It was nothing fancy, just to get the work up higher. I was going to build the first one out of 2x4s, then switched to white oak. I still use that one every day.

"And while I was building it, I was already thinking about the next one: Wouldn’t it be cool if it could fold up, be portable? So I started working on that, figured out the hinge and hey, let’s dress it up a little. And while I’m working on that one I started thinking about the next one, let’s make it a little fancier.”

Next I asked him where he sells these. “No, I can’t take any more orders,” he says. “I’ve been trying to retire.” Hastings has had a long career with punishing hours, which I’ll touch on in a future entry.

I ask him if he at least has a website where people can see his work. He has no personal website, but “I’ve got a page on Lumberjocks, on Facebook, and I just started on Instagram,” he says. “I just do what I do, I don’t care to be famous, by any means, I just like to share my stuff, maybe inspire people.”

Hastings has produced some incredible work, and we’ll pick out some more of his projects to show you in the future.

http://www.core77.com/posts/70765/Les-Hastings-Incredible-Folding-Portable-Workbench