My new workbench needs holes for holdfasts

Re: My new workbench needs holes for holdfasts

Edward in Vancouver


>I've got my spacing on a 6" grid, starting 3" away from the front of the bench and 3" away from the left side of the bench. LV sells 12" x 72" maple slabs pre drilled for dogs as well, but they use a 71/4" grid.

The wonder dogs work well, but are somewhat tedious to thread every time you want to clamp. I made myself a a wedge clamp from two samples of t & g hardwood floor pieces, anchoring two 3/4" oak dowels to the fixed piece, this is inserted into the table and the free piece is snugged up to the work and tapped in tight with a mallet.

Nice thing with the 3/4" hole system is you can make your own dogs, I may have nicked a few irons through stupidty, but not with metal dogs... I like to install a 1/4" bullet catch in the dogs to keep them from slipping down. Even made a 3/4" oak socket to accept the stem of those spring-loaded study lamps, so I can postion the lamp anywhere I want to on the bench.

Re: My new workbench needs holes for holdfasts

Michael Recchione


>For holdfasts, you don't need a whole grid of holes. If they're traditional holdfasts, 6 holes is probably the most you'd ever want, 4 holes would be plenty for a bench the size of yours (I'm assuming 6' or so), and you could get by with 2. There are two positions where holdfasts are very useful. The first is for holding stuff you're mortising near the front face of the bench. So the holes for those should be close enough to the front face so that they can be used to hold fairly narrow stock near the front. Let's call the length of the horizontal arm of the holdfast "L". You should have two holes positioned about L+1" from the front face of the bench - if these are Grammercy Toolworks holdfasts (which I heartily endorse as a very satisfied customer!), that comes out to about 9" or so in from the front face of the bench. You'd want the holes a minimum of 2L apart + some slop, but I don't find this close a spacing all that useful. It's better to think in terms of placing the right one about L+1 inches from the right end of the bench (I'm assuming no tail vise since you said no dogs), and the other one between 3" and 6" to the right of the face vise. If the bench is very long, a third hole in between these two might be useful.

The second thing holdfasts are good for is holding battens to serve as backstops for surface planing or for holding wider stock. If you elect to use them for this, 2 more holes further towards the back would be what you need. I'd go with the same spacing along the length of the bench, and place these 2-3 inches in from the back face of the bench.

- Mike