I am going to have yet another workbench project coming up because I’ll be moving a piece of furniture outdoors — one I can stand up and use.

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I don’t have a dedicated workbench or permanent shop.

That makes things difficult when I have pretty much any project.

I had picked up a discarded round coffee table years ago that I’d more recently attached my vise to, as featured in a prior post.

But since I knew I would have to turn the table back into a table after using the vise, I put anchors into the table so I could make the process easy and stable.

This proved to be reliable, and I had used this setup since May of this year, but the table was just too unstable, and the roundness and rockiness of table were making for a difficult surface for other projects.

As luck would have it, I found another abandoned table a couple weeks ago. It just screamed, “I’m a balcony workbench!”

At least to me.

Under the street lights, it looked like solid wood.

Issues with it were the flaking polyurethane, the horrid design, and the aphorisms.

Clearly someone had put in a lot of effort, but yikes.

Armed with my new Vacmaster 6 gallon, 3 HP shop vacuum, I was ready to do stuff with less concern for making everything dusty.

Also instead of the 2AH batteries I’d been using for my sander, I now have 5AH batteries!

The designs were going pretty quickly with even pressure on the random orbital sander with the 80+ grit cubitron sandpaper.

I started to realize that it wasn’t solid wood but veneer. But that’s not so bad.

I also didn’t need to get all the design off.

Protecting the surface was imperative. This is the time of year I see a lot of termites around, and I’m not interested in giving them free meals.

I let the table dry before moving on to the anchors!

Penciling in where the holes should be would make for a reduced chance of error.

And then for the anchors themselves.

It looks in this photo a little more crooked than it is.

OK the vise is done.

Moving on to the tabletop belt sander-disc sander combo.

I did the same penciling in.

Anchors installed and ready to rock.

The sander and vise on opposite ends of the table means that both can be up at the same time.

But there was one more thing I had to install.

My benchtop table saw!

Pencil first again and then drilling out the holes.

I had to use smaller diameter anchors because the inside allows only for smaller bolts.

And they fit into place.

I chose that space for maximal outfeed area.

I expect to have lots of projects with this setup.

And my new shop vacuum did an amazing job. Full cleanup took almost no effort.