Why Tables Belong on Job Sites

I've been working in the trades for a good long while now, over two decades or half of my life, and for most of that time I worked like most builders, off of the ground. Then around a decade ago I made a small table with a face vice on one side and splayed legs for heavy wood working for the hand tools i favored at that time. It was great, but limited because it had to be dismantled to fit through doorways, and the 2x4 foot top surface was quite limited. Thankfully it had a shelf underneath for tools to be staged.

Then a couple of years ago I had the good fortune to work with a highly skilled local crew, Artisan Builders, and an exceedingly knowledgable and skilled friend of mine from California, Ryan Bundrick.

On this job that ran for a year and a half, I learned more about building, more rapidly than I have ever learned before. One of the thing I learned about was the benefit of tables for work. We had some large 8x4 foot tables on wheels, and some on horses. I have since replicated these, and have my own versions, designed for quick grip clamps, with shelves underneath, flip up wheels, and adjustable heights for different projects. For larger and longer term projects, they are incredible time and energy savers, allowing entire door casings to be assembled and fitted, parts to be laid out, and tools staged.

However, many of the jobs we do are smaller and shorter than this, running for hours to a couple of weeks, or they involve moving around a large house or building site, and the need arrises for something that can be assembled and broken down quickly.

When I saw the door and window crew using Ridgid adjustable height saw horses, an idea clicked in me. I ordered a sheet of baltic birch plywood from Viking and soon had a 60x40 inch table top that fit perfectly on top of a set of these wonderful horses, providing a sturdy work surface between 32 and 40 inches tall, deployable in seconds, and easy to carry balanced in one trip.

Now we have two of them, and I have made a shelf and rolling tray for them so that they can be moved around a large space as easily as the rolling cut/work station.

And since creating these, I have to say there is rarely ever a job too small to justify not pulling them out of the trailer and setting them up, basically for anything involving tools, parts, fasteners, etc. The first trip to the site is bringing the tables in. Then they get covered in tools and materials. Gone are the days of rummaging through tool bags on the ground, gone are the tool bags too actually.

We set them up inside, outside, on scaffolding, on roofs if the slope allows, under ez-ups, with shade umbrellas through them, and often one for the tools and another for the actual work to happen on.

The thing is, I'm certain there are countless builders who will say that they are unnecessary, silly luxuries, as are our shade structures, out-feed tables, light stands etc. etc.

And to that I say, "I know." Of course they are unnecessary.

What they are is effectiveness multipliers.

Yes I can work without tables, and have done so most of my life.

These days, however, when I am working running a crew trying to meet competitive quotes, I don't have time to waste time.

As 'El Capitan' of this crew, I am always aware of how long things are taking and where the time is going, and it has been my observation that a surprising percentage of time on a modern building site with all the power tools is not going into cutting and shaping, but into finding the right tool or attachment, or finding a good place to put a tool, such as a track saw and an 9 foot track. The floor is one place to put it, a table is a better place.