Portable Loading Bench Almost Finished

[Splitear]

A few weeks ago I had a hair-brained idea to turn an old guitar stand into and adjustable and portable loading bench. Tonight, just like Johnny Cash, I tried to put it all together.

I really didn’t like how unstable the legs were, so I knew I had to find a better base. Looking around my garage, I found an old creeper that I purchased at a garage sale a few years ago for a couple of bucks. The casters were shot, so I pulled them, and added some rubber feet. The head rest on the creeper made the perfect buffer for the butt of my guns.

Next, I needed to create a crossbar to attach my cleaning bench to. I had a yoke with rotten ends that I replaced on my canoe, so I chopped the ends off, bolted them to the neck stands.

I pulled the ends off of the cleaning rack, and screwed the forearm rest to the bottom of the cleaning rack to act as a rest for my standing rifle.

I had to get creative, and it was a lot of fun. I still want to add a couple of large dowels to attach the yoke crossbar to the base and add a little more structure. The dowels will remove the adjustable feature, but I think it will be worth it to make it more ridged. Overall, I’m pretty happy with it.

 

[necchi]

Ok, Well done.
But which part of it is going to be portable?

 

[Splitear]

Ok, Well done.
But which part of it is going to be portable?

It breaks down into two pieces by removing the thumbscrew on the center post. Both pieces are only a couple of feet long when broken down. I’ll just need to figure out how to attach the dowels so that they are removable. If it works the way I hope, I should also be able to use the dowels to make small leveling adjustments to the bench as well. All together I’m sure it weighs less than 10 pounds.