I've decided to use the craftsman bench for now. To the best of my ability I've come to the conclusion that the thing is pretty darn flat and that i should be OK to use that as a solid base to put something on to build on. Being that it's only 6x2 I want to have a portable building board so I can remove whatever I'm framing up while it dries to work on something else. Could I just use a 48"x16"ish piece of dry wall or ceiling tile laid onto my craftsman top as my primary build board? Would I be able to pickup a 1/2" piece of dry wall with a wing or horizontal stab without warping and messing it up? I wanted to order one of the 48" Great Planes build board but apparently they don't make them anymore or everyone online is out of them.

All of the sheets of drywall at Lowe's were all 4'x8' or bigger. Can I cut down the drywall sheet with a saw without trashing most of the dry wall sheet or making it unusable? I've never cut or messed with dry wall before. And how do you know that your table is flat and that the drywall is flat as well? Am I over thinking the whole "flat work surface" thing???

Ya I plan on doing this for sure. We did this with the Telemaster twice. But each time we went out to the field, some grumpy old guy found something wrong with it and told us to go back home and fix it then come out again. Both times everyone was pretty unfriendly and didn't want to bother with some teenage kid and his newly built Telemaster. So needless to say I didn't really want to go back to that particular field and decided to go it alone. Hopefully I will be able to find a much friendlier group of guys this time willing to help a new guy get going.