Park Tool Company has a lock on one particular item. The workstand. No other workstand comes close.

Now, you might wonder about this, because there are a lot of other workstands out there. But I wouldn't own one of those "consumer" workstands. Nothing for the "end user" will ever find its way into my garage. No, it's got to be the real thing. Fake workstands are for fake mechanics.

Park makes a fake workstand for consumers, but no thank you. If I were you I'd get the real thing, which is characterized by the clamp mechanism, shown at left. This is what makes Park's stand the state of the art. It's extremely adjustable, heavy duty, and mounts on a variety of pedestals.

Speaking of which, my pedastal, pictured at right, mounts to a solid rectangular base. There are tubular rectangular bases, for travel to races, but I'm not partial to those. Too light-duty for me. If I'm going to take my work stand to the race, I'll just take the whole thing. Yes, it's heavy, but a hand truck totes it into the back of my trailer and then I'm off. Yes, I did say trailer. I come prepared.

There are round bases, and they're fine too. Some shops will use a very short pedestal, perhaps a foot long, which they'll bolt to a big square iron pedestal -- a tube perhaps four inches square with a wall thickness of a quarter to a half inch -- which will in turn be lagged to the concrete floor. That's overkill for garage use.

You might think needing an industrial strength workstand represents some sort of psychological compensation for things I lack in other areas. Perhaps you're right. But there's nothing worse than wrenching on your bike and having it sway or tip over because the workstand is not up to the job. Getting a too-tight seat post out of the seat tube; reaming an overly thick head tube; chasing a badly cut bottom bracket thread; you don't want some wimpy workstand when you've got a man-sized job to do.