Suggestion: Alternate Workbench recipe that uses iron ingot instead of ore.

[Rejutka Lupex]

There are areas where iron ore is hard to come by, and if you need a workbench, you're out of luck - go searching, or abandon your current location and go back to where iron was.
It's kind of ironic that I can build the advanced crafting table, but not the basic version.

[prtmh]

If I understand you correctly you have iron ingot available, (in a warehouse I presume ?). Go back there and place iron ore in a warehouse as well. Then its available anywhere, anytime.