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A Light Weight.

Because the legs are closer together, this stand is a little i unstable in use.

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After taking a look at the top of the stand and its height adjustment mechanism, A Levelers. The there's just one more thing left to eccentric feet check out. And that's the base. This allow you to is where the rubber meets the road, adjust them so literally. What you want is a base the stand sits that can support a lot of weight and flat on the floor, will stay put without sliding.

Wide Stance. For me, the most important thing about the base is a wide stance. As the two legs of the stand come down to form the four feet, the space between the feet should be pretty wide. Some stands have bases that are narrow at the bottom. The problem is narrow feet make the stand more likely to tip over. This is especially true when the stand is raised to its full height like at the drill press. 1 like to look for feet that are at least as wide as the top of the stand.

Folding Stand. Another thing I look for on a base is whether it folds up. The whole idea behind support stands is that they shouldn't take up a lot of floor space when you don't need them.

In the photos above and at right, you can see that most of the stands

STAND OPTIONS

do fold away. The one shown at far left above doesn't fold. And while the cross base doesn't take up much room, the outstretched legs can be a nuisance.

I mentioned before that I like to have a stand that folds up for easy storage. But sometimes a stand can fold up too easily. For example, if a board sags a little as it comes off the saw table and hits the stand, you want to make sure the stand will stay in place and not fold up and crash to the floor.

Uneven Floors. And speaking of the feet — there's one other feature you may want to consider. And that's a leg leveler. Not every stand comes with a way to keep the top parallel with the tool you're using.

Shop floors are rarely level, so having some way to compensate for uneven floors will help make the stand work better.

In the photo above, you can see a few ways that stands account for uneven floors. One way to do that is to have all the feet threaded like the cross base shown at far left.

A second way of having all four feet adjust is shown in the left inset photo. Here, the plastic feet pads

l ^; Stable Base. A

wide stance and rubber-tipped feet give this stand sure footing in the shop. One foot is adjustable for uneven floors.

Easy Storage?^^

A folding design can save space in a small shop.

are mounted to the legs off center. The result is you can adjust the foot simply by rotating the foot pad.

The ability to adjust all four feet is great, but really, all you need to do is adjust one. And that's what is shown in the stand on the far right. As you can see, just the one foot is threaded to take the wobble out.

Unfortunately, there's no perfect stand. But on the next page, you'll see two stands that offer some extra features in a single design. And, to learn where to find the support stands that are shown here, you can turn to page 51. &

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ShopNotes No. 86