Hydraulic Work Benches

I have lived in this house for 2 1/2 years now, before then I lived in a tiny terraced house in a quiet street. Bike maintenance and repairs tended to happen in the street, weather and light permitting. When I moved here, I got a big garage and went from working in the street to scrabbling on the floor in the garage. I regarded this as a huge leap forward, being able to work when I like and not having to pick up all the tools every time I stopped work.

Some time later I made another huge leap forward, I bought a hydraulic bike work bench from a friend of mine who was turning it out of his bike shop in Leeds. Money changed hands and now I can lift bikes up to working height. Fantastic, and once I had done this it was plain there was no going back to scrabbling on the floor. Since then I have augmented this bench with another, more a platform on wheels which lifts up underneath the middle of a bike leaving the wheels in mid air. My good friends from the MZ club, Joe and June got me this from a local trade place very cheaply. This is a very useful stand for bikes which have no centre stand when adjustments to the wheels of forks need to be made. I can't recommend a proper bike stand highly enough.

As the projects get bits of work done on them they tend to come on and off the bench to suit whatever I am doing. I will be writing about progress on whatever is being done on the bench under the heading On the Bench.