After some vigorous grinding and wire-wheeling it's not quite so hideous. Upper corners of the original saddle were ground down to be flush with the plate. I also rounded other knee-eating sharp corners while I was at it.

Some spray paint, a few hours cooking at low heat in the oven, and voila... flat-top jack stand in action!

It ain't the prettiest, but it seems very solid. And if my welds are questionable (ok, ok, not "if") it shouldn't matter. The welds aren't structural, they just hold things in place.

Extreme overkill.
I like it!

If you can't really tie a knot, tie a lot.
If you can't really weld... melt a lot of metal...

p.s. My welds look like that too!

Benzwood,

Now that's what I call over-engineering. Those jack stands would make an old-school German engineer proud!

I did a few more mods before calling them done...

First I ground off the bottom of some of the legs so the stands would sit flat without rocking.

Then I painted the bottom 1/4" of the legs for rust protection for the newly-exposed metal.

Then to correct a minor annoyance. The cable that keeps the height adjustment pin from getting lost is clamped on the ends.

These ends quickly frayed and I had stuck my finger on their tiny sharp pointiness on more than one occasion.

So I leached some solder into them to secure the frayed ends, ground off the prickly parts with a Dremel, and then coated them with "liquid electrical tape" (some black goop that you paint on).

Before/after shots:

Then on to the Cotter pin that holds the adjustment pin in place.

The points of the Cotter pin were sheared off at an angle when manufactured, leaving a needle sharp point that must be avoided during use.

So I ground those to a nice blunt round tip. By far the least effort for most reward, amazing how much nicer it is to secure the pin in the hole now. :)

Then because I'm insane, I added a finger loop to more easily remove the pin.

I put a cable tie through the pin, superglued the ratchet mechanism on the tie so it wouldn't adjust any more, secured it to the pin with some heat-shrink tubing, rounded off all the sharp parts with a Dremel, and heated the cable tie with a hot air gun so that it could be molded it into a nice finger-pull shape.

A side-benefit of this mod is that it's a lot easier to find the pin if it's misplaced.

I am considering painting a trim strip on there somewhere to match where I painted the feet, just to mess with the guy who suggested duct-taping scraps of board to the top of the stands. :)

But for now, I'm just waiting impatiently for a need to jack my car up.

Front/rear views with modifications complete:

Be careful what you wish for...