BenchMaster II

[Charles Lowry]

Anyone familiar with a product called the BenchMaster II? I saw an ad for it in the January PFM on page 113. It looks OK, in principle, but I wonder if any of The Grumblers have seen it or used it. They have a website at www.clubframeco.com. (http://www.clubframeco.com.) I'm mildly interested in it, if it works OK.

[John Ranes II, CPF, GCF]

Charles,

I got to play with this tool at SACA in Bologna, Italy a few weeks ago. The developer, Gary Leete makes a whole range of Hobby or D-I-Y products, and that's where I would classifiy this product.

It is well built, clever, but I feel is designed for the occasional frame. I can see it working best with very simple and flat styled moulding. If you were building less than five simple frames a week, then take another look, otherwise I'd look for something more serious.

John

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The Frame Workshop of Appleton, Inc.
www.theframeworkshop.com (http://www.theframeworkshop.com)
Appleton, Wisconsin
jerserwi@aol.com
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[artist]

bought one about i month ago. greatest thing since sliced bread , for the money. Once you figure out the clamping techniques it is great for smaller mouldings. There are other ways to clamp the corners together other than the strap clamp they give you, but this works well. It is a very short learning curve. your local home improvement store has all sorts of clampy things to play with,at a reasonble price. good luck and join on!!!

[artist]

Charles - also you can use other v nails after you take them out of the cartridge. Since Fletcher is doing away with their v nailer I got a great deal on a lifetime supply of v nails. Bench master v nails are to expensive.

[Jim Miller]

I bought one of these with all the goodies at last year's Atlanta show, with a specific purpose in mind.

Occasionally we have to join very large and/or bulky frames; old, warped, fragile frames; and frames with odd profiles, all of which are difficult or impossible to handle through the pneumatic v-nailer.

For those, I glue & vice (or strap clamp) all four corners and let the glue dry overnight. Next morning, I turn the frame upside down, construct whatever spacers/pads are needed to support the profile, and use the BenchMaster.

I really like that tool for the difficult v-nailing situations. It would do everything any other v-nailer would do, except as John points out, it's too light-duty for production use. It will use any brand of v-nails, but they have to be inserted one at a time -- and that makes it s-l-o-w.

If you're considering it as your only v-nailer for professional use, forget it. But if you are a hobbyist or need a primitive, manual tool for odd situations, then the BenchMaster is great.