Review on BLACK DECKER WM225 Portable Project by Eder Boesel

This is my fourth Workmate. The original, bought in the UK in the early 1970s, had a cast aluminum H-frame which offered considerable rigidity. Since then, frames have been made from thin, stamped steel, reportedly reducing production costs, but at the cost of losing the strength of the original. The second iteration, bought here circa 1980, has held up fairly well despite being stored in an unheated barn for the last four years, but lately the threads have started to slip. I have another one that I bought in 2014 when the previous one was sent to the barn. This has a number of improvements over the 1980 model, most notably the unlocking mechanism, which uses the same levers to lock and unlock the frame. The latest one, bought last week to replace the one in the barn, has to be assembled by the user with poorly written instructions with no text - just confusing pictures. This is NOT an advancement in design as it is almost impossible to get the vise bolts on the handles without some sort of clamp to hold everything in place and x-ray vision to find the holes where the locking pins go. Other than that, it's a solid platform, and with power tool base modifications (with 2x4) it's capable of supporting my DeWalt miter saw and Cutech bench router.