Review: Caldwell Stable Table Lite portable shooting bench

Once in a while a truly useful and innovative product shows up that makes your life easier and more enjoyable, and strange as it sounds the Caldwell Stable Table Lite did just that for me.

It is completely self-contained in one unit — no extra bits to carry or to lose, and no tools required. Just throw it in the back of the wagon and then unfold it when at your shooting location. With a weight of only about 10kg it is easy to lift for any adult.

Caldwell Stable Table Lite — The Stable Table set up and folded. It weighs a handy 10kg

It is a pretty simple construction, combining a table top and seat made out of some type of heavy duty, rugged (ask me how I know it is rugged!) polymer, both supported on legs and fittings that are all well-coated metal.

Simply put, it is nothing more than a lightweight, folding shooting bench. So what?

Well, I’ve now spent more than a year beating this thing around in dozens of locations. More than 50 people have used it for shooting both rifles and handguns. I have used it to conduct firearm accuracy tests for review articles.

The long-suffering bench has even fallen off the side of a LandCruiser ute at around 20km/h onto rough ground with no damage apart from a scratch here and there. I am seriously impressed.

With the Stable Table, I am able to get accuracy equalling what I can achieve from a solid bench at the local gun club.

It is fantastic when teaching new shooters, as they can start out with lots of support before progressing to other, more challenging shooting positions.

I think the secret to the stability of this light table is that the seat is connected to, and part of, the bench, so as you sit down on it your own weight turns a less than stable platform into a very stable shooting platform.

Downsides? Yes, there are two slight negatives, at least for the mechanically challenged like me.

First, you need to allow a good 30 minutes to assemble the thing from the box in the first place, and you want to pay attention while doing it to get it right. Of course, it helps if you read the very well-written instructions, which I finally looked at after struggling and then realised it was actually much simpler than I thought.

The second point is that the first time you go to fold it up, it seems like a puzzle, but after doing it a couple of times it becomes second nature and yes, those instructions will help guide you there as well. Now it takes me about a minute to set up and about the same to fold it away.

It has even been used as a picnic table in the field to allow the family to put food out more conveniently than on the ground.

As you can tell, I am impressed by this portable bench. It is an innovative and great-value addition to the line of Caldwell products for shooters.

Selling for a bit over $400, depending on where you get it, the Stable Table can be ordered through almost any gun shop, if it’s not on the shelves already.

If you’re a keen shooter, I believe you will be well pleased if portability is critical to you.

SPECIFICATIONS