Mastercraft Portable Clamping Table with Tool Storage

I’ve been very leery of clamping tables from Canadian Tire. The discontinued MasterCraft version was very poor, and the only reason I bought the JobMate one was that it was dirt cheap on sale, not it’s quality. Although it’s not saying much when you compare it to other MasterCraft clamping tables, this one is better built. The two MDF clamps can grip objects up to 8 ¼ inches apart (like it says in the specs) and it can hold them firmly. The yellow handles are cheap, but they do turn fairly smoothly and can put a lot of pressure on any object between them. . The clamp holds straight objects (e.g., a piece of wood firmly) but has problems with even small angles. The yellow bench dogs will help you with irregular shaped objects. They’re fairly well made and don’t feel like they will fall out when pressure is applied. They’re made of plastic, but it will mar wood if you clamp down firmly. (Electrical tape or FeltTac could help with that.) The tool performs reasonably well. I used it to hold a few boards in place while I used a power planer and a board sander. The legs gripped the old table I was using as a workbench just fine. There was no sliding. One problem is that the non-mar legs will mar the tabletop. (Again, FeltTac might help here.) However, if you are working on a long project or will be doing a lot of banging or sawing, you must secure the clamping table to the work surface. Spreader clamps get in the way of the turning handle. C clamps did the job better, but didn’t really fit too well with the table I was with. I finally sacrificed the old table and added some holes for bolts. This keeps the unit in place firmly, and I can remove it and throw a cover over the table and no one knows it's being used as a quick fix workbench. I've only had the product for a month, so I can't make confident predictions about the lifetime of this tool. While I am pleased to see Canadian Tire has responded to user feedback (they killed the really bad MC clamping table) and actually improved on the product line with this portable clamping table (not a difficult feat), I can only give this one a cautious recommendation. This is NOT a terrific, high quality product, but it’s also NOT a terrbile, shoddy one. If you can work with it’s limits it will serve you okay for light duty clamping purposes. If you need something free standing, get a WorkMate or something similar.