Last night I installed the vise in my workbench; after taking the picture, remembered why I had been delaying. I have some nice maple for a skirt, just have to color it a bit to bring out the figure, which I will be able to do as I now have the dyes. I had intended to add the skirt BEFORE the vise, but got carried away with that dovetail thing and went ahead and mounted the vise. Upon posting the picture to the dovetail thread, it occurred to me that the skirt issue will now be more complicated. A pic of the mounted vise is here in post #49: http://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.p...5&page=4&pp=15
Here are a few questions:
Do most of you inlet your bench or add a skirt so that there are no gaps between the pads and the bench surface? You can see that there is a space of about 1/2 inch taken up by the iron rear jaw of the vise. I could easily thin down my skirt a bit and fit it around the vise.
Another thought was to apply the skirt and then reinstall the vise, leaving the gap, which would provide just enough room to inset a small bar clamp jaw, which could allow the jaw pads to be extended quite a bit to the right to hold wide boards. With the additional pressure of the clamp, I would think this would make a good substitute for a twin screw vise such as Lee Valley's. Has anyone tried that before, and if so, what were the results? Could the same thing be accomplished by giving the inside faces a slight taper, similar to a clamping caul? Would a slightly thicker piece of material placed at the far left of the jaws induce enough controlled rack to firmly hold wide boards that extend well beyond the iron jaws?
Which is preferable for jaw pads, soft or hardwood. I used some fairly soft, clear pine, because that's all I had laying about in the appropriate thickness.
Now on to the racking problem. While trying out the vise and new saw last night, I discovered that the bench has some racking when force is deliverd along its length. If it is noticable with just sawing, I am assuming it will be worse with planing. How can I best reinforce it without badly disrupting the storage potential?
It now has a plywood shelf across the base, and will have three drawers running under the top. It is built from the Woodsmith plan, most joints are "constructed lap joints", that is, 2x4's applied in such a way as to create the laps, as opposed to cutting the wood. The long top and bottom stretchers are bolted on similar to bed bolts. Part of the problem lies in the fact that the pieces were cut to final size from the list, rather than fitted as I went, so there are some minor gaps in the joints.
I'm thinking of screwing additional 2x4 braces lenghtwise from the inside and just under the level of the drawers so as not to interfere with them, and 2x6's over the lower stretchers on the outside, so as to allow access to bolts to dismanlte the bench if need arises. I don't want to glue either of these braces if possible, as that would negate the breakdown feature. Both braces would be fastened to both halves of the combined 4x4 legs. Note that the stretchers are not flush with the legs, which complicates things a bit.
Front to back bracing is a little more straight forward, as the storage access is not such a big factor here.
I appreciate any suggestions you might have.
A pic of the entire bench can be found here: http://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.p...ight=workbench
Here is a detail of the right front corner which gives a closer look at the joinery (pseudo joinery?), includes a guide for the drawer runner.
Dan
Reply With Quote