Hello all.
For some reason or another hand tools and methods have seemed to grab my attention lately.For some Background: I started out ww'ing with a little lathe,originally bought for making fishing reel handles.Moved onto acquiring a table saw , made a few projects and lost interest (like most of my hobbies).
Well I'm back to wwing , and now that I think about it the reason I started getting sucked into hand tools was because I was in need of a jointer / planer, but realized I didn't have the space ( half of a single car garage) so I went in search of alternative's, Stumbled upon Paul sellers videos and have since became seriously interested.
I now own a no 4 & 5 Stanley, some cheap HF chisels,16" tenon saw, disston D8, marking gauges, with a saw set and some files on the way. Since beginning my hand tool journey I've quickly realized my desk with a 3 1/2" machinist vise aint gonna cut it for holding stock to cut or plane.
Which really leads to my question...I have this older Jackson furniture desk made in the 50's / 60's. Heavy as heck, it has dovetail drawer construction and is made of densiwood? Which best I can find out / tell from cutting into it, is it's solid wood that's been impregnated with something. My original plan was to build a paul sellers bench, but I don't have room to keep this desk (which was both my grandfather's and fathers) and build a bench. I really would like to repurpose this desk into a workbench. It's 5ft wide by roughly 33" deep and I would guess the top is 11/2" thick or so. I'm mostly looking for confirmation on whether this is a good idea or would I be much better off just building a new bench? This will be my one and only bench.
Also I'm having hard time figuring out how to raise it up, while keeping a solid foot print and how to then attach the new extension to the desk. I do have some ideas on how and where I would attach a face and tail vise, still thinking about how I would clamp to the top though. Anyways any input on this would be greatly appreciated.

(On a side note, apologies in advance for my poor writing skills. Never have totally figured out where all the dots and commas go.)