Having used this for a while now I’m a bit disappointed with three aspects of it: 1. I was happy to have a proper wooden vise at first but the large work surface is actually only mdf with a thin wood veneer over it. I had some glue spilled onto it and unlike a proper wood surface, scraping the dried glue dabs off took the veneer clean off in those spots as well. The front part is actual wood tho. 2. The front jaw block is not level with the main workbench. It hangs down a bit so if you have a workpiece lying across the two halves, it wobbles. Had the entire surface been actual wood and not veneered mdf, I could have planed the halves level after installing the mechanism. 3. The entire closing mechanism (don’t know its proper name in English) is spread out as to take up most of the width of the jaws. So if you want to place a workpiece low in the vise for sawing (dovetails for example) you can’t because you can only fit something low in the vise way out towards the edges. This probably isn’t an uncommon design for bench vises but I do wish the bolts had been a bit closer together. I do realise that it is not huge,y expensive and I probably shouldn’t expect the world from it. Just adding these observations for potential buyers to read.
There is no assembly, you just take it out of the box and use it. They also make the Smart Workstation Pro that is made of all Beech. You can check it out here. www.woodcraft.com/products/sjobergs-smart-workstation-pro
