Re: Walnut service bench
irk miller said:
Sorry, I wasn't exactly clear in my comment. I couldn't come up with a solution to mounting wheels on the pivot base and on the rear support leg that would allow it to roll easily and not have the possibility of the support leg folding under while in motion. And since I'm not an engineer (nor do I play one on TV) and didn't want to drink all the beer it would take for me to figure out how to strengthen/reinforce the support leg, I went the less complicated route.
I did consider those for my "milkcrate bookshelf" bench though, and they would work well for moving only the bench around, but I wanted to be able to move bike and bench at the same time.
The drawback to those are, each caster supports 100lbs, for a combined total of 400lbs. When you lift one caster at a time, as those are designed to do, the bench is then being supported by only 3 casters (only 2 if/when it "teeters"). So now your overall caster/bench load capacity has just dropped by 25-50%. And unless your bench/bike combo weighs less than 200lbs, you've just exceeded the load capacity of the casters contacting the floor and likely damaged them.
When selecting casters/wheels for a project, you have to consider how many wheels will always be in contact with the floor at any given moment. If your floor is not smooth/level like finished concrete, you run the possibility of the object "teetering" on only two of the wheels/casters, and need a load capacity on each wheel/caster that'll accommodate the load it's supporting. For my purposes, I needed/wanted the casters to support 600lbs (CB750 (the heaviest bike I own) + bench weight + some leeway). Because I'm rolling on top of a plywood decked floor, the chances of it "teetering" on only 2 casters was a certainty, so I went with 300lb each capacity casters.
I couldn't find those style casters with that high of a load capacity that were reasonably priced for my "budget bench". I also came to the conclusion that if my casters had to support all the weight anyway (to move it), there was no reason/need to have them fold up. So I just bought locking casters to keep the bench from moving when I didn't want it to.