A working newspaper for the bench, not a product pitch

Bench Bolt covers craft, repair and small-business work for solo makers and repairers across South Africa.

We publish how-to columns, tool teardowns, market notes and plain-language explainers on bench setups, tool maintenance, labour pricing, parts sourcing and the admin that keeps a one-person operation standing. Reader workshop stories and tips are where most of it starts.

Bench setups

Fitting a vice, task lamp and tool wall into a spare room, garage corner or shared yard without losing the floor you stand on.

Read the one-meter bench column

Tool maintenance

Handles, ferrules and cutting edges give up long before the steel does. Teardowns that show what fails first and what a repair really costs in time.

See the teardown notes

Pricing your labour

A plain method for quoting repair and craft jobs: real hours, materials markup, travel to collect parts, and the cost of a redo.

Work through the rate method

Sourcing parts

Bearings, belts, switches and odd fasteners rarely come from one stop. Field notes on spares shops, scrap yards and market stalls around Johannesburg's industrial edges.

Follow the sourcing route

Admin and paperwork

Written quotes, deposit records, basic invoicing, and what to do when a supplier takes a deposit and goes quiet. One folder, physical or digital.

Read the admin explainer

Reader diaries and tips

Workshop stories and repair diaries from solo makers are the desk's main source of material. If you have one worth telling, the editors want to see it.

Send a story or tip

Looking for the full archive of columns and market notes? Browse the published posts or see what else the desk puts out under offerings.

Send the story from your bench

Most of what runs here started as a reader's note: a repair that went sideways, a tool that failed in an interesting place, a market stall worth the trip. If you have one of those, the editors want to read it.

The contact page is the only place to send a workshop story or tip. No pitch needed, no polished writing, just what happened and what you learned from it.

Prefer to see how submissions are handled before you write? The editorial standards explain what gets published and what gets left out.