You know how Bill got these? He waited for me to think of a project I wanted them for. He never told me he wanted them. He just waited. Finally that patience paid off and I told HIM I wanted them. Because he loves me he agreed we should get them. Sneaky so and so.
My project involved the refinishing of those two sewing machine which are very heavy. My thought was I need to be able to lift a side and slide wheels under the legs, then lift the other side and repeat. I needed to be able to do this without asking for help.
The research part of my brain kicked in and I started looking at different options from different companies. I went to the usual suspects, Lowe’s, Menard’s, Home Depot, Harbor Freight, Ace Hardware and Amazon.
If you search for “furniture lifting jacks” on Amazon you will come up with at least 634 results. I suspect that many of these are the same jack just listed by a different seller or under a different name. Many of them are much less expensive than the DeWalt jacks.
I choose the DeWalt not just because of brand name recognition, although that did not hurt. There were some features I specifically wanted:
- Hands free lifting – I knew I might need my hands to hold and steady the sewing machine case.
- Heavy lifting ability – these will do 340 pounds and while the sewing machines do not weight that much appliances might, shop tools can.
- Jack stability – I wanted the jack to be able to lift, hold steady, and not fall or collapse under load.
- Availability – could I go to the store and buy one or did I have to order it. I had wanted to just run to the store and get the jack, come home and use it. Because of cost I did end up ordering but I could have purchased the DeWalt at the Home Depot right here in town.
For my project I did not need the best of the best of the best, with honors, of all construction jacks. That being said if I’m going to buy this I want it to have the widest scope of use in our lives. That means being able to transition to the shop, maybe the saw mill, construction jobs and just day to day stuff like moving an appliance. I did not consider Vevor brands or the off brand names that you find on Amazon.
In this video Concord Carpenter | Tool Lab did a comparison of Viking Arm, Dewalt and Irwin. While DeWalt did not walk away as the winner in all the categories it walked away as best overall.
Tool Nut did a video comparing the DeWalt and the Irwin while acknowledging that Stanley also makes a comparable model that they did not get so they were not included in the review.
It was actually the Tool Nut review that sealed the deal for me. I did not need the precision that the Viking Arm offers. I liked the controls on the DeWalt better than the Irwin in both placement and smooth operation and DeWalt allows me to use my foot.
Tool Nut pricing
DeWalt – $159.00 and when I bought it earlier this year they had free shipping. Tool Nut had the lowest price on this two pack. Amazon was/is selling one jack for around $119.
Irwin – IRHT83100 $108.99 single jack
Lowes pricing
Viking – $119.00 single jack
Irwin – $109.00 single jack
Amazon pricing
DeWalt – $119.00 single jack
Viking – $129.00 single jack
Irwin – $74.24 single or $184.99 two (yea that math doesn’t seem to math but ok just buy 2 single packs and pay $152.48)
While Tool Nut suggested that you find prices on the three they mentioned they do not carry the Stanley Jack. I was also unable to find it offered on Amazon but it was on Ebay which might tell you all you need to know.
We ended up ordering from Tool Nut because they had the lowest price and apparently I was not having a sewing machine cabinet lifting emergency like I thought I was. When we ordered the jacks were not in stock so there was additional wait time. Turns out I didn’t even need the jacks for my project. I was able to move the machines without needing to put them on furniture moving wheels. Mostly because ours are currently in use. I was too lazy to go get them. I found a set of 4 at Harbor Freight which I would have paid for but they do not have them in stock at our store and I didn’t want to order them. The ones I found at Home Depot were in the realm of crazy expensive for what I was trying to do, so that was a hard no. The cabinets actually have wheels. Tiny 100 plus year old wheels that roll with the exact amount of difficulty you would expect of tiny 100 plus year old wheels. I was able to get them pushed where I needed them to be.
Just this past week we used the jacks for the first time to lift up tall heavy kitchen cabinets so that we could install flooring under them. You read that correctly, we left the cabinets where they were and put down flooring.
These cabinets are 84″ tall, 21.5″ wide and 27″ deep solid wood they are heavy and awkward to move. The space we were working in is tight and we had nowhere else to go with them. We had pulled them out to put down. The flooring started to go crooked and the best way to fix it was to take the flooring out away from the way so that everything would line up better. The problem was that the two cabinets were sitting in the middle of the room and there was nowhere to move them. The answer was jack up the cabinet and lay the flooring so that we could finish it and move the cabinets back into their normal spot. It worked beautifully. It worked so well that at one point I found myself leaning against the cabinet that was sitting on a jack, one jack. It didn’t budge, that’s how solid it was. To be fair on one side was the other tall cabinet, not on a jack, and on another side were shelves. I would not recommend leaning on anything jacked up. I’m just saying I was leaning on it and it didn’t wiggle at all.
I took the doors off the cabinets by myself and had I used a jack to hold the door while I was removing the hinge screws I’m confident the door would not have fallen when the last screw came out. Luckily there was no damage but still it would have been so much easier had I thought to just go grab a jack to keep the door up and balanced. We put them back on together so the old foot under the door trick worked just fine. But if you don’t have someone to hold a door up and keep it steady while you try and line up tiny hinge screws these jacks are the bomb.
The next day we used a jack to level the washing machine. I have been commenting that the washer has become as unstable as the wash woman. Seeing how the jacks worked I asked if it could be used to raise the washer so that the legs could be leveled again. It worked beautifully. Leveling the washer is one of those things that sounds easy but seems to defy logic. You adjust a leg, let the jack down and it seems almost perfect, the level on top says it’s almost perfect. But it still wiggles. You raise it again and make another adjustment and you repeat this approximately 2,438 and 1/2 times till you get it perfect. The jack makes it easier.
Bill did comment that the easy down adjustment wasn’t smooth it felt a little jerky.
We are both pretty pleased with these jacks and are now actively looking for things to jack up. I had commented my regret of not having tried to use them to get the huge upright, extremely heavy, freezer from the garage to the mudroom because lifting that beast was ridiculously difficult. At one point Bill had to leave me in the mudroom holding the freezer while he ran from the garage to the front door and back through the house to help me lift and move it into the room. I’m sure we could have figured out some way to use the jacks that would have made the whole process easier.
