one workmate, two different cultures

We're all aware of the many warning labels to be found on consumer products in the U.S. today. This phenomenon is attributed to strong consumer-protection laws, the litigiousness of American society, and the need for manufacturers to protect themselves. Looking at vintage Workmates provides an interesting and amusing illustration of this.

If you've read about the Workmate 79-001 Type E, you know that it is the same model that was produced and sold in the U.K. as the WM325. You may also have noticed that the instruction manuals for both of these two models are available here on the Documents page. Since the two Workmates are the same, obviously Black & Decker would have used the same instruction manual in the U.S. and the U.K., right? Well, no.

Take a look at the three photos below for the U.S. model 79-001 Type E. The first two are warnings from page 2 of the U.S. instruction manual, and the third is the caution label applied to the step of the Type E.

These warnings for U.S. owners are a stark contrast to the approach taken by Black & Decker in the U.K., where none of these rules or cautions had been deemed necessary for the WM325.

Instead, the U.K. instruction manual illustrates a reckless British Workmate user throwing caution to the wind by using the WM325 in the following ways:

Caption at bottom: "Saw panels up to 8'x4'. You can hold even the thinnest panels down with all your weight"

The photo on the left shows the user perched on a Workmate on hands and knees, with his full weight on top of a board that he is cutting with a hand saw. His lower legs extend off the end of the Workmate, slightly bending the board he is cutting. The middle drawing shows the user sitting on the jaws with his legs straddling the Workmate front to back while shaping a board with a rasp. And finally, the right-hand drawing shows the same user standing atop the jaws while doing some painting, with the caption assuring us that it's "no problem".

It would be interesting to know if these differences still exist in the owners' manuals for current models. If you happen to have any current users' manuals from the U.K. please leave a comment to let us know!

On a related topic, you have probably noticed that most Workmate owners refer to the low horizontal panel at the front of the Workmate as a "step". This was a term that Black & Decker assiduously avoided, even in the U.K.

The U.K. manual for the WM325 consistently uses the term "footboard", which at least acknowledges that you're going to place a foot on it occasionally.

In the U.S. manual for the 79-001 Type E they tried to emphasize that you should not stand on it, by changing those references to "base board" and "lower platform". However, if you look carefully, you can find one spot they missed, where the U.S. manual still says "foot board".