Workbench top design (long)

Re: Oh, and I forgot ...

Thom D


>I figured why not leave one side as plain as possible. In that arrangement you can still use dogs either side, but if you want to use the face vise or the tail vise pocket they are all in one good work area.

The pocket on yur double vise won't be useable as on mine, because you are not using the Veritas double vise which holds parts square, so if you want to put a leg piece in a double screw in the pocket (are outboard of the vise screws), you would have to do some nonsense like have a ballancing block on the other side. This is where the L-tail vise shines it tracks solidly.

There are wooden version of the double vise that have additional mechanical features but they put a lot of stress on small wooden parts, and aren't for me.

Re: Catastrophy and hope

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX


>I attached an adjustable planing beam on the back side. Has come in very handy, and the space required is much less than a separate beam.

Pam

Re: SECOND TRY - more details

Thom D


>The L is just there to provide clearance for the screw and to provide a place to attach the tracking pieces that hold the whole thing straight.

What you show is conceptually nice, but in practice is done with a lot of metal parts some of which are welded (therefor joined in ways not available to the woodworker). These interlock well enough that they don't need the outboard tracking pieces. The knowledgeable woodworker looks at this arrangement and knows it is a metal vise. Which is fine with me if that is what you want.

Re: SECOND TRY- last detail

Thom D


>"Thom, this time your assumption about grain directions was different from what I thought, look at the drawing below. I set arrows to show "my" directions."

Uugh. That scares me blind. I would never insert a framing piece like the second arrow from the left. It's crossgrain which meakes it challenging. Good luck with that.

"I can't make the wood of your blue box white, because it's part of my apron, and the apron is going to be dark ;-) If for some really bad reason (e. g. incompatible grain directions) I won't be able to have an apron in some point, I would abandon the whole apron idea."

There are more good reasons to drop the colour and species differences than there are to keep them in my opinion, but then the crack down the middle of my bench is largely whimsical also. I do think a number of difficulties will occur. You will have pretty dissimilar pieces of wood glued together that are going to fight each other. And these are decent sized sticks. How well that works depends on a lot of external factors like climate. You are proposing using a pretty weak wood even if not as bad as american walnut. I think that is doable, though if you have tons of the stuff lying arround, why not set up a planing beam and see if the stuff is practical. People do use a wide range of species so it can all be done.

On your drawing, your third arrow from the left is over a piece that should be continuous with the top. It is the piece your tail vise it attached to so severing it's primary connection to the top, by long grain, is serious. You could create the effect you have in mind by scarfing that third piece to the top, then intersecting piece two by means of a floating tenon. If you did this there would be a gap for seasonal movement. It seems a bit like teaching dogs to dance to me...

"I have another question to you (and everybody else). In my workbench's case (that is to say, using wooden screws), is there any particular reason why I should prefer a normal front vise to a leg vise ? I begin to think that a leg vise without guides in the way could be a serious alternative ... "

No. It is a pretty primative vise, it works, it has parallelism issues which seem like they are fun to fiddle with. I like the one that Vandal built, though I wouldn't trade for it. In my opinion, when it comes to using the bench, it is a state where you are no longer thinking about the bench, or what it means, or whether it is pretty, or makes nods to history, or has this engineering, or is all wood. When the bench moves from being an object of desire to a means to an end, the best vises are: 1) Paternmaking/Tucker; 2) L-shape as on continental "benches; 3)large Record quick adjust (could be switched with "2" too close to call); 4) Wooden face vise with metal guide hardware; 5) Wooden face vise with wooden guide hardware; 6)leg vise with complex parallel mechanism if easily removeable; 7) wooden leg vise.

This thread has opened my eyes the the use of a face vise to make the L vise compact. A folding L-vise. I don't like the Kluge L-vise in the face vice, but it might be better, I don't know.

Re: Second tail vise dog row

Michael Recchione


>No, the Shakers weren't dummies when it came to mechanical stuff - they thought this out pretty well. Look at Dirk's drawing. As the vise gets tightened on a workpiece, the vise face twists and acts like a lever, forcing the guide bars to want to lock against the sides of the guide slots (this is hard to describe without a diagram, which I don't have an easy way to generate - but it isn't a newly discovered phenomenon we're talking about - it happens to every vise where the jaw is much wider than the screw and the load isn't balanced some other way, e.g. by another screw). As you use the vise, the guides wear (particularly since this is all wood), eventually to the point where the vise racks and/or loads the screw. In the process, the guides become useless. If you continue down that path without fixing things, the screw becomes hard to turn when you tighten it and/or threads break.

This happens to face vises with wide jaws, which is why you eventually wind up having to use little blocks on the opposite side of the screw from a workpiece to combat the racking (DAMHIKT, but suffice to say that I've got a collection of them in a caddy near my face vise). It's for this reason that people use things like shoulder vises (which allow them to center the work on the screw all the time) or leg vises with narrow jaws. It's also why people have adopted the single coaxial dog hole design for tail vises, or have striven to keep the axis of the screw as close as possible to the line of dog holes as possible - the shorter that moment arm is, the longer the vise will last without racking.

For Dirk, another question. You reject the notion of a single dog hole as if it's ridiculous to even think of "wasting" 15 inches of the vise face. What will you do with those dog holes if you have them? It only makes a difference in terms of the maximum length of workpiece you can clamp on the benchtop. But you said you don't have a length limitation for the bench, and you had no problem with making it over 8' long. What's the issue then with using the most robust design for the vise, even if you don't have dog holes all the way down the length of the movable jaw?

Re: Second tail vise dog row

Thom D


>"No, the Shakers weren't dummies when it came to mechanical stuff - they thought this out pretty well."

I still wouldn't build it in preference to the Klauzs or Frid plan details.

Re: Second tail vise dog row

Thom D


>"For Dirk, another question. You reject the notion of a single dog hole as if it's ridiculous to even think of "wasting" 15 inches of the vise face. What will you do with those dog holes if you have them? It only makes a difference in terms of the maximum length of workpiece you can clamp on the benchtop. But you said you don't have a length limitation for the bench, and you had no problem with making it over 8' long. What's the issue then with using the most robust design for the vise, even if you don't have dog holes all the way down the length of the movable jaw?"

Another two points on this issue:

1) While I think the people who say tail vises distort the work are overplaying their hand, they have a point about crushing the life out of the board. It often takes relatively light pressure. The planing thrust force is carried by the fixed dog, usually, and the down force by the bench so this design isn't entirely the same as face vises, however I take your point that attention needs to be paid since on occasion a lot of force is used.

2) If one doesn't want to loose the 15", but just had to use the Shaker tail vise. then one option would be a single flush-mounted bench stop at the back of the vise. That gets the 15 inches back and the intermediate positions between the flush-mounted bench stop can be established by moving the fixed stop back and forth. A bit of a kluge if most of your planing was at the maimum length, but assuming it's an occasional thing it should be good enough.

Re: Link only

Thom D


>http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=31148&cat=1,41637

Re: Catastrophy and hope

Deirdre Saoirse Moen


>I had no idea what a planing beam was, but a quick search found me the FWW newfangled workbench article with a pic. Thanks for the idea -- I've been meaning to re-do the underside of my bench (and eventually the top) and this is something I can add to the project.

Point 2

Michael Recchione


>Cheap as it may sound to say this now, I was going to suggest this. Actually, I was going to suggest using a few of them, where those other dog holes would have gone :-). But it would have violated the "all wood" rule. On the other hand, it would have been in keeping with the "keep it as complicated as possible" rule.

Point 1

Michael Recchione


>The point about there being less force required to hold a board flat on the bench is well taken. However, the principle is the same - a design like this will cause the guide bars and slots to wear to the point where they wobble and the vise racks. It'll just take a little longer than it would with a face vise. It took me about a year or so to get to that point with the vise I made using the (at the time) ubiquitous Eastern European face vise hardware. And that was with steel guides.

If I were ever to build a tail vise, the engineer in me would probably insist that I either use something like the Greene design or one of those "dog only" schemes. But each of us should do what makes him happy. :-)

Re: Point 1

Thom D


>"But each of us should do what makes him happy. "

At times I would rather be easily pleased than good!

Re: Free standing bench

Dirk Vogel


>Hi Thom ! Unfortunately, as not only I'm German, using dictionaries to try and understand specific vocabulary you're using, but also being a beginner in woodworking, hence often not recognizing translations because even the German termes don't tell me nothing, I really have difficulties to get the meaning of the paragraph of your text that speaks about breadboards, rods and beams. I think you answered my question, I was speaking about what supports your benchtop and not about tool racks, but I can't understand the answer, even not to the point to know if it contains important information :-) Do yo think a little sketch is possible ?

Thanks for your patience,

Dirk

Re: Second tail vise dog row

Dirk Vogel


>Ok, I don't know the Krenov picture, and the only tail vise diagram in Landis I can see (p. 130) gives this kind of vise, but even there the screw is not perfectly aligned with the doghole ...

Re: Second tail vise dog row

Dirk Vogel


>Very well, Mike, I realize now that I'll have to put the screw exactly behind the doghole if I want an effective tail vise. Your last argument is indeed perfectly valid, even if I can't remember telling that I have no length limitation :-) Now, the only thing I've to check is the best way to be able to use not only the single doghole I'd put at the end of my freshly aligned vise, but also the end of the vise itself as a clamping possibility. Thanks for your advise !

Greetings, Dirk

Re: Second tail vise dog row

Dirk Vogel


>About your second point, Thom : that seems a good possibility to me, too. I'll studi a new layout and ask your opinion like always :-)

Re: Point 2

Dirk Vogel


>Thanks, Mike, I feel very understood :-)) That's exactly what's tormenting me right now : that these little tings are made of metal ...

Re: Point 1

Dirk Vogel


>What's the Greene desing, Mike ?

Re: Second tail vise dog row

Thom D


>The Krenov is in his book The Fine Art of Cabinetmaking, read my seminal review on Amazon :0). It is page 61 in the reprint edition. It's not a woderful picture it just happens to show the position of the wooden screw on his bench. Krenov is an all wood guy perhaps the only well known one who isn't all wood for some historic reason.

Page 232 of the Landis books has drawings of screw placement for the Klausz bench. What he calls an "End Cap", is what I am refering to as a breadboard joint. Hereafter I will call it an "endcap". From the Krenov picture the screw placement looks the same as on the Klausz bench but proportions would need adjusting if one was using s wooden screw.

Re: Second tail vise dog row

Thom D


>I don't accept this is the better method of doing a vise, but if you wanted to do it this way and didn't want to use the metal bit, you could use a wooden step on the extreme right end of the vise body and that would serve the same purpose for a while.

Re: Free standing bench

Thom D


>Page 232 of the Landis books has drawings of screw placement for the Klausz bench. What he calls an "End Cap", is what I am referring to as a breadboard joint. Hereafter I will call it an "endcap". From the Krenov picture the screw placement looks the same as on the Klausz bench but proportions would need adjusting if one was using a wooden screw.

OK, here is a drawing in profile view of the endcap. It's a simple piece of wood with a rebate in it to accept the tenon that is integral with the top of the bench. The ends can either enclose the tenon or leave it visible. The endcap itself can end up being used as a mounting point for vises, whether double screw vises, the L shaped face vise, or the L shaped tail vise, so the endcap needs to be well attached. On page 231 of the Landis book (first edition), there is a Top View of the Klausz bench. You will note that a captured nut and bolt assembly is used at each end to attach the end caps. In the Klausz case he has a piece of framing at the back of the bench that forms the outside of the toolwell, and does not use more than one bolt per end. I used 2 in order to mount my two planks and hold on my endcaps that do not have dovetail framing. My system is quickly dismountable no fiddly bits, no mortises across the grain to weaken things etc.

I used the proven hardware bonding technique. See the Gougeon Brothers on boatbuilding. When the GBs were selling NASA and GE wind turbine blades up to 165 feet across, they had to find a way to bolt the roots of these massive blades to the generator hub, and hardware bonding is the way.

In the diagram you will see a 1" tenon, and a 1" slot. Where you want a 1/2" piece of threaded rod (coral/gold in the diagram) you drill a 3/4" hole. It could be a larger hole but that was all I had room for (I did the bolt gluing before the tenon was cut). You position the bolt in the hole and fill with WEST epoxy, or similar. When the epoxy has hardened, it will never release the bolt, and you can crank on the nuts as hard as you want. I used acorn nuts where the nuts are visible, and flush set nuts for the double vise.

This same process can be used with bolted stretchers and is much more sanitary than the process of captured nuts and chopped holes in stretchers, Of course with stretchers there is a decent all wood alternative, wedged assembly, which is what I used. Rock solid and even easier than the nuts to knock down, if you need to move it in pieces.

I won't go into how you cut these holes since I don't know if anyone cares, but this kind of joinery does not really require skill it is very forgiving and lines up perfectly.

Re: Point 1

Michael Recchione


>The one from Jeff Greene's web site that we were talking about the other day - the all-wood one with the axis of the screw lined up with the dog holes, but with only a single dog hole on the movable jaw. There's another scheme that you can find where there's no jaw at all - a single dog rides in a slot in the bench, which is lined up with the row of dog holes on the bench-top - that's what I meant by the "dog only" design. Because there's no moving jaw, it gives a lot of support to the board clamped in it - very good for things like relief carving (which I do a fair amount of, but I understand you don't really want to get into carving).