Say Rehd:

I wish you would reconsider your assessment that my line of responses were personal attacks. They were not. They were simply of judging for one of two possible basic approaches independent of outside realities, solely on their own merits. One or the other. My fundamental error in this was not stating it up front, and therefore we were not on the same page. Mine was headed 'what if' and if I could state yours, it was 'what is'.

And so looking at your point of view, it really does make sense to build a strongbench and then a strongback if that's what you'll end up making anyway. It truly is a reality that I was not appreciating.

And furthermore, in the slice and dice, you do make some comparisons and some good points:

Stiffness:

There is no reason for an external strongback (I make the distinction between this and a strongbench b/c some people are actually building from a large wide bench datum) to be less stiff than an internal, in fact because it can be larger(you mention 10in sq?), it can be easily stiffer. And therefore can be moved around the shop and not fixed in place.(I was incorrectly lumping the long external bench w/ Moores or ladder approach - and I shouldn't have)

Support:

Under normal circumstances, both the external or internal require legs or stands or sawhorses.

Alignment:

Looking at Joe Greenley's approach some posts above, alignment can be done in similar ways for both, although I believe it has to be done 2x for the external.

I think I'll stop here with your points. . . .

So Rehd, I say directly that I have no personal thoughts against you. I read most of your posts and have gleaned much information from them and will surely do so in the future. For those in the past and those yet to come, I personally thank you as I'm the richer for it. And for what little part of your personality that glimmers through from your inputs, I often and still have a wry smile of amusement and appreciation at your manner and direction.

-mick