An Unexpected Arrival

Got home today to find a rather unexpected, but very welcome parcel sitting on the doorstep….

The Worx Professional Jawhorse, in a rather cool grey and green.  (It did arrive in a box, just decided to take the photos on the porch).  An awesome tool, and I’d expect this means now down under!  What many have been hanging out for eh?!  It is in the Pro Green, so worth looking out for that rather than the orange colour scheme of the standard Worx range (and the Aussie-branded Rockwell).  This unit is the same as the US Rockwell Jawhorse that I’ve spoken about on here in the past.

Has a stylish look, especially the colour scheme, but this is fundamentally a workhorse of the workshop.  Versatile, very stable, yet very portable and can be folded up for storage talking up a very small shop footprint.

The label says it all.  Near 20kg in weight, it can clamp up to 940mm, and with a tonne of clamping force (1000kg, not the 1 Ton stated on the label!), and can support up to 272kg of weight.

It has a good jaw opening in the normal rear jaw orientation.  For increased range (without some of the optional jaws that may not be available in Australia), the jaw is reversed, giving the maximum 940mm range.

The back of the rear jaw is made from the same urethane, so it is rigid, yet with some degree of give which prevents marking of the clamped object.

At the front of the Jawhorse below the label, there is a wide wheel.  It is useful for moving the Jawhorse over a distance if you don’t want to carry it’s 20kg bulk.

The rear leg can be extended out to be a sort of handle, for pushing or pulling the Jawhorse around.

The clamping operation is done via the footpedal.  The 100kg (max) force that you exert on the pedal is multiplied 10 times by the mechanism to produce the 1000kg clamp force.  To move the jaw over a range, there is a toothed end to the bar connected to the pedal which engages the bottom of the moveable jaw, indexing it along.

The jaw can be slid when the pedal is not engaged, and twin spring loaded bearings maintain a constant pressure on the underside of the moveable jaw track.

The innocuous, yet powerful teeth which transfers the 1 tonne force into the jaws.

The jaw pressure is maintained while force is applied to the foot pedal.  The Jawhorse can be used in that mode, acting as a horizontal press, or by flicking the ‘switch’ to the lock position, the foot pedal is maintained at the maximum pressure that was achieved.  The switch can be engaged once the desired pressure is achieved, or can be flicked on before that final stroke leaving both hands free to support the workpiece.

When opening the unit up from its storage orientation, the front legs have a tidy spring-loaded latch concealed behind the leg.  This is a rather neat solution for maintaining the legs in the open position.

The front legs angle outwards sideways, but are still pretty close to remaining in the same vertical plane as the front jaws, allowing the top working surface to be used as an anvil.  With the wide front legs and the single back leg, the unit is both stable on uneven surfaces, but has a large footprint making it stable when supporting large, heavy objects.

With the unit upside down, and the front legs folded down, the footpedal folds back, trapping the legs in position.

The rear leg then folds over, and engages into a slot in the front-rear of the Jawhorse, trapping the legs and footpedal in position.  It then becomes a handy handle for lugging the unit around.

When the unit is not in use, it can be folded up and stored on-end to minimise the unit’s footprint.

So that is the mean, green Worx Professional Jawhorse.

If you haven’t seen or read about me talking on it before, you may wonder how such a beast can exist, being so similar to the Triton Superjaws.  A large number of factors, including the now defunct GMC not maintaining the Superjaws patent, along with them not retaining the Triton engineering staff, meant that when this staff went to work for Positec (the parent company of Worx and Rockwell), they were able to produce the ultimate Superjaws – the Jawhorse.