New LN Shoulder Vise

[Dan Sink]

Haven't seen this posted yet, but LN just released their new bench vises. I apologize if its already been discussed. This comes at a good time for me. I'm going to build my first bench this summer. Its going to be a beginner's bench, nothing fancy. I'm not experienced enough to try to take on a serious bench yet. But my goal is to use the beginner's bench to help gain the skills to build my final bench in about 5 years. And I figure that for the vise hardware for my beginner's bench I might as well get a vise that I'll be proud to transfer to my final bench when I build it. Anyway, LN's new shoulder vise looks pretty sweet. But the cost is steep. I don't know, I've got a few weeks to think about it before I plan on starting. This would use up my tool budget for a while. (I need to get that dang tool slush fund started so that the wife won't have to stress out about my tool spending. See guys, I'm really just thinking about her well-being.)

One last thing, I fell in love this weekend. I finally got a chance to use my LN 60-1/2 that I got about a month ago. My first LN tool. Now I'm in love and want more.

LN Shoulder Vise

http://www.lie-nielsen.com/catalog.php?grp=1480

[Mike Henderson]

That looks very nice - what you'd expect from LN. One question if anyone knows - They talk about an installation kit but it's not clear what that is. Might it be tools you'd need to do the installation? I see that it's returnable so it would not be consumables used to attach the vise.

Mike

[Steve Thomas]

plastic templates for marking out locations of screws and what not maybe?

[Thomas Crawford]

So what is the advantage over the LV twin-screw? I am about to start gluing up my Roubo and haven't decided on vise hardware yet.

[Kevin Adams]

Thomas--

I happened to see one of these new LN twin screws last week and they appear to be top notch. A possible advantage is the ease of installation as you just have to screw two metal brackets to the underside of your bench. I also liked just the one handle, but I guess you could do that with LV, too.

I didn't really see any potential drawbacks except possibly getting access to the chain drive (for adjustment, cleaning, etc.) since it is buried through the bottom of the wood vice. It's a very clean set-up, but I would wonder if you would need to remove the screws and take it apart vs. the LV where you just remove the front cover? It's all very solid though.

Kevin

[tyler mckenzie]

The Lee valley has controlled jaw skewing, It doesn't look like LN has this capability. Those two bolts sticking out makes it look unfinished, which i find weird for a LN product. They're all about they're slick design.

[glenn bradley]

As Tyler points out, if intentional racking is desired, it isn't mentioned. I would think a nice wood cap could take care of the ugly double nut arrangement.

[Jim Koepke]

That looks very nice - what you'd expect from LN. One question if anyone knows - They talk about an installation kit but it's not clear what that is. Might it be tools you'd need to do the installation? I see that it's returnable so it would not be consumables used to attach the vise.

Mike

One of the other vise listings actually has a list of tools like sockets and other wrenches one may need to install the vise. Looks like someone forgot to make the list needed for this particular vise's installation.

jim

[David Keller NC]

"Its going to be a beginner's bench, nothing fancy. I'm not experienced enough to try to take on a serious bench yet."

Dan - Far be it from me that I ever get accused of suggesting not to buy a really nice tool, but based on your post, I would give this one, and the Lee Valley one, a pass.

There are a couple of reasons for this. If this is going to use up your tool budget and you're still missing some critical tools - like some mortising chisels, for example, or a foreplane and a jointer (if you don't use machines), then you're better off getting some of those tools and either a nice (but inexpensive) Jorgensen quick-release front vise, or perhaps even better, an antique, which will save you some cash and be far better than the Asian made piece of junk vises that are in every WW store these days.

The second reason has nothing to do with money. If you fear that your skills are not up to making a complex workbench, then I suspect that a twin-screw vise may be frustrating, thogh they're not anywhere near as complex as tail vises (those are a bear - I'll never do another one again).

Finally - consider what you're going to do with your "beginner's bench". Assuming you do a nice job in solid wood (which I don't doubt, and would be required to take the force of closing a twin-screw), then you're going to want a vise mounted to it if you want to sell it or pass it to a relative, not a few empty holes.

[Richard Magbanua]

"Those two bolts sticking out makes it look unfinished, which i find weird for a LN product. They're all about they're slick design."

I thought the same thing when I saw it. It could definitely use some brass or "Lie-Nielsen" stamped on it. Especially at that price. I'm sure it works very well though.

[Dan Sink]

Dan - Far be it from me that I ever get accused of suggesting not to buy a really nice tool, but based on your post, I would give this one, and the Lee Valley one, a pass.

There are a couple of reasons for this. If this is going to use up your tool budget and you're still missing some critical tools - like some mortising chisels, for example, or a foreplane and a jointer (if you don't use machines), then you're better off getting some of those tools and either a nice (but inexpensive) Jorgensen quick-release front vise, or perhaps even better, an antique, which will save you some cash and be far better than the Asian made piece of junk vises that are in every WW store these days.

The second reason has nothing to do with money. If you fear that your skills are not up to making a complex workbench, then I suspect that a twin-screw vise may be frustrating, thogh they're not anywhere near as complex as tail vises (those are a bear - I'll never do another one again).

Finally - consider what you're going to do with your "beginner's bench". Assuming you do a nice job in solid wood (which I don't doubt, and would be required to take the force of closing a twin-screw), then you're going to want a vise mounted to it if you want to sell it or pass it to a relative, not a few empty holes.

David - thanks for the advise. I was originally going to go with a Jorgensen, but then started thinking about something nicer. But perhaps its best to go with my original plan and use the extra money elsewhere. I'm planning on building Tom Caspar's Workbench in a Weekend (although I suspect it will take me longer than a weekend). I hadn't thought about the fact that the top would probably need to be solid wood for the force of a twin vise. Tom's design calls for a plywood top, although I was thinking of using two sheets of mdf board glued together and screwed from the bottom for my top (with a 2x4 border as specified in Tom's plans). I don't want to do a solid wood top because there is a likelihood that with my current skill level, I'd just waste a lot of good wood (and money).

I have power tools that I've accumulated from doing a lot of restoration on my fixer upper house. Now that I'm running out of home projects to do for fun, I've decided to move my interests to woodworking. But our house is fairly small and we have small children, so I'd like to go the quiet Neander way. Plus, I'm not going to build to be efficient. There isn't much more furniture needed in our house. I just like the therapy of working with my hands after sitting in a cube all day. So anyway, my point is that I have a lot of hand tools to get. For example, I'm currently using a set of Stanley chisels purchased years ago from Menard's.

[Pam Niedermayer]

Sorry, guys and Thomas, but this is not a shoulder vise. I can put up with a lot of english repurposing, but not this as it will simply confuse everyone who tries to talk about twin screws and shoulders forever and ever. A shoulder vise looks and acts like this:

A real shoulder vise

Pam

[James Scheffler]

Dan - Far be it from me that I ever get accused of suggesting not to buy a really nice tool, but based on your post, I would give this one, and the Lee Valley one, a pass.

ff getting some of those tools and either a nice (but inexpensive) Jorgensen quick-release front vise, or perhaps even better, an antique, which will save you some cash and be far better than the Asian made piece of junk vises that are in every WW store these days.

Finally - consider what you're going to do with your "beginner's bench". Assuming you do a nice job in solid wood (which I don't doubt, and would be required to take the force of closing a twin-screw), then you're going to want a vise mounted to it if you want to sell it or pass it to a relative, not a few empty holes.

X2. If it's a choice between getting an excellent vise plus a nice handplane vs. just an "ultimate" vise, I would go with the former. You can buy one of the Jorgensen steel vises or a similar one from LV, or buy the steel vise hardware (also from LV) that you make wooden jaws for. If you're worried about the width of boards you can clamp with one of these vises, you should be aware that the wooden jaws or jaw liners can be quite a bit wider than the metal hardware. You may even find that one of these vises is all you really need.

Also, I'm not sure how much space you have to work with, but it's really handy to have a 2nd smaller workbench, which would be a great place to put the lesser vise once you build your ultimate workbench.

Best regards,
Jim

[David Keller NC]

"I don't want to do a solid wood top because there is a likelihood that with my current skill level, I'd just waste a lot of good wood (and money)."

I would not recommend this route based on your stated desire to go mostly neander. To do much work with handplanes, saws, chisels, etc, you need bench dogs and holdfasts. Neither of these co-exist with MDF very well at all. Plywood's only slightly better. What will happen over a short period of time is that the holdfasts (and bench dogs, if they're metal or hardwood) will crush the sidewalls of the holes and greatly enlarge them. Not only will it look ugly, it will have you swearing a blue streak each time the dog wants to drop all the way through the hole to the floor or you have to sand or plane off the little divots at the side of the dog holes that are raised by the holdfasts crushing the side of them.

You can build a solid wood top very, very cheaply by laminating construction lumber found at your local big box store. In the Western US, that's typically Douglas Fir. In the East, the cheapie material of choice is Southern Yellow Pine.

Yet another inexpensive option is Christopher Schwarz's experiments with LVL - check out his blog entries from a few weeks ago.

While it's true that hand-planing that much construction lumber to laminate a bench top would be a real chore, and require a good deal of skill, if you've a lunch-box planer or have a friend in the area that you can bribe that has one, it's pretty much cake to laminate a benchtop. And cheap too.

[Dan Sink]

I would not recommend this route based on your stated desire to go mostly neander. To do much work with handplanes, saws, chisels, etc, you need bench dogs and holdfasts. Neither of these co-exist with MDF very well at all. Plywood's only slightly better. What will happen over a short period of time is that the holdfasts (and bench dogs, if they're metal or hardwood) will crush the sidewalls of the holes and greatly enlarge them. Not only will it look ugly, it will have you swearing a blue streak each time the dog wants to drop all the way through the hole to the floor or you have to sand or plane off the little divots at the side of the dog holes that are raised by the holdfasts crushing the side of them.

You can build a solid wood top very, very cheaply by laminating construction lumber found at your local big box store. In the Western US, that's typically Douglas Fir. In the East, the cheapie material of choice is Southern Yellow Pine.

Yet another inexpensive option is Christopher Schwarz's experiments with LVL - check out his blog entries from a few weeks ago.

While it's true that hand-planing that much construction lumber to laminate a bench top would be a real chore, and require a good deal of skill, if you've a lunch-box planer or have a friend in the area that you can bribe that has one, it's pretty much cake to laminate a benchtop. And cheap too.

Thanks for the advise. Looks like I need to rethink my whole bench plan. Glad I posted this before I get started.