Portable Loading Bench Almost Complete

[Splitear]

A few weeks ago I had a hair-brained idea to turn an old guitar stand into and adjustable and portable muzzleloader 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.

Edited October 4, 2022 by Splitear

[SpacemanSpiff]

Great job. Thats pretty darn cool. 

[Lawdwaz]

Looks like there’s plenty of good projects left in that garage.  

 

[rob-c]

Love it , making something functional out of scrap is very rewarding . Now take a day and clean your garage ..

[Splitear]

Haha, believe it or not, I spent about 3 hours on Sunday just getting the garage to where it is currently at. It became nothing but overflow storage for about 3-4 months  I at least have it to where my wife can park her car in it now. 

I've got a little more work to do on the bench. First is adding some rigidity while maintaining the ability to take it apart into 2 pieces. Then deciding if I want to make it look any better or keep the cobbled together look that it's currently at. I enjoy seeing how people re-use things, so I'm tempted to leave it as is. 

Edited October 4, 2022 by Splitear