Sjobergs hold down

One of my problems with my bench is that, like many other benches from Sjobergs, it has a skirt, which makes it had to clamp things down to the surface. It's a wide-ish skirt, so I can clamp close to the edge of the bench. But past 3 inches or so, there's a hollow, so my regular F-clamps don't register properly. I thought about flipping the bench over, and simply gluing in a few strips of extra wood. But that means either flipping it with the Emmert still attached, which is heavy, or taking the Emmert off, and it's heavy. And then there's the need to re-drill all of the dog holes, and hoping like hell that the new lamination doesn't cause the top to start warping again. That's the last thing I need... so far, it's been behaving itself. So I broke down the other day and bought the hold-fast that Sjobergs makes for the Elite bench.

I would rather buy a holdfast from Veritas... or from Gramercy, even. I have a couple of Gramercy hold fasts at home, they're great. But the bench has 1" holes, instead of the 3/4" that everyone else seems to like to use.  I suppose I could find someone to custom forge me a set of serious, old-school holdfasts... but that takes much more time and planning than an impulse buy.

The Sjobergs hold down is pretty stout, and the just-under 1" rod is actually solid steel, instead of a plastic filled pipe, like the smaller version they make for their smaller benches. It's pretty clear that the whole unit is designed to be bolted through a thinner surface, hence the flange, and the threads on the bottom. (Though the nut for doing so isn't included, which seems weird to me.) In that context, it makes sense to have the arm slide up and down. But since I'm dropping the thing into a hole in the benchtop, it seems a bit redundant. It works fine, it's just quirky and weird. In the end, it works fine, so whatever.

Either way, it works, which is, I guess, all that's required. I do wish they had used a nice grippy wooden handle, instead of a plastic one, which isn't so grippy. What's the use having such a stout clamp if you can't grip the handle hard enough to really get down on it?

So, as a tool, it works as should be expected. But the design is somehow less than I expected... which is fitting, I guess, since the bench started out the same way.

Shortening the bench

After almost 8 months of living with it, I finally trimmed the bench back to be even with the end of the pattern vise. One of my regular vise operations is to cut something to length with a hand saw, and that, to me, means doing it to the let of the vise. I like my cuts as clean as possible, so starting them 3 or more inches form the vise was really not working out. I was able to do some cuts with the vise at 90 degrees, but it was just... less intuitive. So, I sectioned a couple of inches out. I still need to recess the bolts that hold on the end cap, to protect my saw teeth, but process was a quick one.

It felt a little weird cutting that segment out, given how much other wood has already been removed from that end of the bench. There was a little voice in my head that was wondering if I was slowly but surely going to keep nibbling away at the bench top until there was nothing left. For now, I think I'm done.

Finished installation, and Final thoughts on mounting an Emmert

Edit: 12/19/2011: I have written up a more concise and better illustrated narrative on how to install the Emmert Pattern Maker's vise here. 

As a result of some of the comments I got from the last post, I wanted to show how the final product turned out, and write up a more cohesive and useful narrative for anyone who's planning on installing one of these, or building a bench around one. 

With the vise re-installed, I have a gap of about an inch and a half between the right side of the vise, and the front surface of the bench top. But also notice that the bench top appears to come down a bit at that point. This isn't an illusion, the bench has a skirt under the top that's about 1" thick. The center of the bench is still 3" thick, so it's not as vile a deception as you might think. I think it's mainly so they can flat-pack the bench with the vises installed. The skirt ended here already, to allow clearance for the face vise that came on the bench. I chose to make the cut so far to the right, because it lined up with the cut in the skirt. I think it just looks cleaner. It's a 1 1/2" gap, which is more than necessary, but it's not really a deal-breaker, either.

If I were building a new bench, the top would be full thickness all the way across. I'd laminate all but the last 2", mount the vise, and then get ready to laminate one more piece of wood. I'd also spin the jaws on the installed vise to measure how much clearance I actually needed for the vise to rotate, and cut the last lamination accordingly. On a scratch-built bench, the clearance would probably be under an inch. and then thickness the last piece to be parallel to, and about 1/8" behind the extended plane of the rear jaw of the vise. I know this seems weird. It was in the original instructions for the vise, and it took me a while to figure out why. The jaws rotate. And there's a lot of mass that will be rotating. If you're off a bit, and you go to rotate your work, there's a chance you'll crunch your work into the top edge of your bench. Not cool. If you really need to clamp to the front of the bench, it's very easy to make an L-shaped shim to hang over the front edge, so you can clamp the work to the front of the bench. where the long arm of the L-shape rests on the top surface of the bench.

Another judgment call was the placement of the vise with regard to the left edge of the bench. In this case, I placed the vise to align with the dog holes that I have on the bench as it came from the factory. There's just over 2" of bench sticking out past the left-most edge of the vise. I don't think it's really going to get in the way of my ability to work, but on a new bench, I'd mount the vise all the way at the end, and drill my dog holes to line up with the vise once everything is in.


Notes on installing an Emmert or Emmert clone: 

(edited on 1/27/11 to be more readable)

I assume that anyone who's trying to mount one of these beauties has done at least a little bit of homework first. There's a lot going on here. I also assume you've read enough to know to take most of the vise apart, and work on the install with the least amount of weight possible.

The most visually obvious thing that needs to be laid out is the recess for the plate, and the holes for the three screws. You do NOT want to lay out those screws until the absolute end of the install. There are two more hidden screws that will hold the vise up while you trim and shim to get it aligned and perfect. Once you get it in the way you want it, then you'll know where you need the holes to be, and you can lay out and drill.

I was really, and justifiably, concerned with getting the mount laid out and drilled just right. The placement of those three holes determines the alignment of the vise with regards to the bench, and if they're even a little bit off, everything will be thrown off, even if it's only a little bit. Given the amount of wood that has to come out just to mount the rear jaw, the thought of getting it wrong only after you've done irreparable damage to the bench top is pretty high on the list of things that can persuade someone to steer clear of the greatest vise ever made.

I think it's conceivable to measure and lay everything out so that it will be perfectly installed with no errors. I also believe that weird things happen, iron castings are reliably not 100% square or straight, and that the human mind and hand are both fallible. A bench top is a huge, expensive, ponderous expanse that will display every evidence of your failures if you aren't able to grapple a little bit with the process of mounting your bench vise. No pressure. : ) 

This is usually where I cringe, because as sure as the day is long, I'm gonna slip up somewhere, and I do NOT want to be the yuppie bastard Emmert owner who owns an Emmert vise, but botched the installation, thus proving that I'm unworthy. In the process of hanging this 90 pound monster, I learned the following: Have faith. There's a lot more wiggle room than you think.

In addition to those 3 big mounting screws, which render every error permanent, there are also 2 more mounting screws behind the rear jaw, in a horizontal orientation, which will give you the time to figure things out a bit. Those 2 hidden screws will give you the wiggle room you need to get the install done as accurately as you are hoping to. Do all of the underside excavation first, and rout out the recess for the mounting plate. You may also have to do some hand work to get the fit right... my mounting plate was tapered in thickness from back to front. Once the plate will fit into the recess, mount only the rear jaw, using only those two horizontal screws, and trim and shim until you're happy with the alignment of the rear jaw. You can keep removing the vise while you make adjustments to the notch, until everything is just right. There's room for trial and error. Once you have the rear jaw alignment dialed in, with those two back screws nice and tight, then you can mark out the three holes for the top screws in the mounting plate. Those three screws are just the punctuation mark at the end of the sentence... the finalizing step in the long process of getting it just right. They are not the leap of faith that I was terrified they would be.

I have to point out that accuracy in drilling is important here, because the nature of countersunk screws is to completely mis-align everything if you don't drill the holes just right. But if you've made it this far, you should be just fine...

Emmert revisited, and a summation of the process to date.

Edit: 12/19/2011: I have written up a more concise and better illustrated narrative on how to install the Emmert Pattern Maker's vise here. 

Edit: 11/1/10: The bench is back together, and I've since posted some tips for anyone who wants to install one of these monstrous miracles.

So, I've been playing with... er... USING... the Emmert for a few weeks now, and I've run into a problem. Setting the vise into the front edge of the bench top was simply not a good idea. At least, not the way I was trying to do it. I read Roger Van Maren's account of how to do a flush mount, and it looked nice enough to me. And the lasting impression was that it would be a good idea.

Originally, I had a mental image of a big vise, traced out and neatly inset into the front of the bench. I thought that a reasonable clearance around the vise would be enough to let it rotate freely. It sounded neat, and clean. The reality is that the Emmert Universal vise is Big, Versatile, and it Needs Room to move around. My own mental image of an inset vise has proven to be possible, but impractical, as it restricts the most useful features of the vise.

I struggled with the issues of laying out and mounting the vise, and this is a brief run-down of my experiences in mounting an Emmert U-6 Universal. I'm not saying that this is the way to do it,  I'm simply putting down what I went through to learn what I know now.

The U-6 is huge. The main jaws are 18" wide, and 6" high. This is without the small machining jaws that are on the bottom, which have already proven their worth. The whole thing weighs something in the neighborhood of 90 pounds. This is not like other vises I've installed. Most others I could mount by lying on the floor, holding up with one hand, and drilling and installing mounting bolts with the other. Installing an Emmert is a not so easy.

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I knew I wanted the rear jaw to be flush with the bench. But the fact still remained that I needed to figure out a practical way to do an accurate layout, so that I could mount 90 pounds of cast iron with half a hope of getting it where I wanted it.

Eventually I conceived of clamping a board to the front edge of the bench, and wrapping the vise around that. The back face of the board would align the vise with the front face of the bench. Brilliant! After this, I took the vise off, laid down a piece of plywood to trace out my pattern, and put the vise back in place. I used the old pencil and washer trick to trace around the vise, and made a pattern that I could use to cut out my inset. And it worked.

I think that laminating another piece to the front of the bench to be in line with the vise is a better idea than flush mounting. But for those of you who want to keep the front of the bench the way it is, and are cutting into an existing bench top, I think a square cut corner notch is the way to go. But you still need to lay out and align everything before you cut the notch out. And the method I just described proved to be a viable way to do that before you cut into anything.

-Side note on the mounting plate. I mounted the plate to be just below the bench surface, which makes sense to me. But it wasn't a simple routing job. The mounting plate is actually tapered in thickness, and is thicker down where the holes are for the screws. So I had to use a chisel to make the recess deeper at the other end. I had read somewhere that the vise requires #18 wood screws. So, that's what I bought. And when it came time to do the mounting, they turned out to be too big. I drilled out the holes and countersunk further. So, my vise uses #18, but my suspicion is that other vises may call for something smaller. 

-Cutting everything out. Using the pattern I got from tracing out the upside-down vise, I used a router with bearing bits to cut into the bench top. But then I realized that I couldn't rotate the vise within the cutout. So, I broke out the carving tools and went to work. It was a pain in the ass.

AND I had to hog out a trench for the beam that houses the threaded rod. I've seen pictures of the chunk of wood that has to come out to clear the vise hub, but I hadn't really thought about beam clearance. Without the trench, the beam hit the underside of the bench, and the vise wouldn't sit square. Clearly, my bench top is thicker than the ones I've seen other pattern vises mounted to. Or, maybe I am. Or both.

-Recently, I noticed that when the vise is tilted, and I rotated the vise, the top flange of the rear jaw bangs into the top, front edge of the inset. I'd carved out a curved recess to allow the vise to rotate in a vertical direction, but it was looking like I'd have to carve more to allow it to rotate around the top edge of the inset. I decided that I'm not going to keep carving forever to make more and more clearances around the vise. It probably would have been an easy fix, but the process so far has just made things uglier and uglier.

-Flash forward to the other night. I had wrapped up work on another project, and the bench was cleaned off. I took advantage of the opportunity, and took the vise off. I took the bench top to the band saw, and ripped a notch where the vise is to be mounted. I made the crosscut to take the last piece out with a Festool track saw. If there's an irony here, it's that it was easier to move the whole 8' bench top to the band saw to do the ripping, but it was easier to do the crosscutting part with a handheld power tool.


As I said before, if I were going to build a bench to hold an Emmert, I'd laminate most of the top, mount the vise, and then laminate one more board to the front to get the front edge to be flush with the rear jaw. This whole learning process has done nothing but reinforce that opinion.

On the one hand, I hope it'll be the last time I have to deal with any of this, and I can now get back to work. On the other hand, knowing what I know now, it would also be fun, for the sake of the blog, and the people who read it, to do a new install, and document the process a little better. I'm on the fence about writing up my own version of a comprehensive set of mounting instructions; there are a lot of good resources out there already, and between this entry, and the second one, I think I've put up all the information that I would have found to be useful. But if I get enough requests for a step-by-step, comprehensive instruction set, I'll do it.

The Emmert Vise

Edit: 12/19/2011: I have written up a more concise and better illustrated narrative on how to install the Emmert Pattern Maker's vise here. 

So, now that the top is flat, and the drawers are all re-built, one more major task remained... mounting this vise that I've been sitting on for so long. I got going on this last part of the bench project a few days ago. Once in a while, something clicks, and it all just works out.

There was a lot involved in putting this thing in, because I took the more difficult road. Most of the time, I see these vises mounted in the most simple way possible... which is still pretty involved... but the owners simple mount them to the front edge of the bench without trying to get the rear jaw flush with the face of the bench. I can totally understand why people do it this way: the vise needs a lot of clearance to be able to rotate and tilt and do all of the other things that it does. I'm still knocking down high spots that interfere with rotation at various angles.

Knowing what I know now, if I were to build a new bench that were going to have a pattern maker's vise on it, I think I'd use a hybrid method... glue up most of the bench top, mount the vise to the front edge, and make the last strip of the top thick enough to come up to be in line with the rear jaw once the vise were properly installed. I think it's important to be able to clamp things in the vise and against the front edge of the bench at the same time, which is why I bothered to go through the effort of mounting the vise the way that I did.

There are a few more small things to do to the bench. I'd like it to be an inch or two shorter than it is. And I have a few alignments that I need the make on the vise... the rear jaw is sitting a little bit high. But the grunt work of this detour from daily productivity is pretty much done.

One Good Whuppin

I have a long list of complaints about my Sjoberg Elite 2500. But after a lot of avoidant behavior on my part, I decided that the money I spent on the thing was a good reason to get it back in workable shape. 

First step was to rebuild the drawers.

The top tier of drawers was too tall in the sides... they rubbed on the top of the carcase, and the extra friction made it hard to open them, and I'm sure contributed to the fronts pulling loose. No good. So I disassembled them, trimmed the sides and back, chamfered the top edges, and added glue to the butt joints when I screwed them back together.

I also added chamfers to the top edges of the second tier down. I didn't need to modify the drawers. But I stuck with the glued-up butt joint idea. Same thing for the bottom drawers. Gotta love pre-fab... the fronts are tall, but they use the same (shorter) sides and back as the upper drawers. I did notice that they chose the wood thoughtfully... the back is made of maple, and the sides are something a little softer and more porous. The sides are screwed to the ends of the back, and the maple holds the threads well, while the softer wood crushes a bit, allowing the screw heads to sink in, and lessening the likelihood of stripping the holes in the maple. While it was nice to see that evidence of thoughtfulness, it's still a pre-fab, screwed together drawer, and isn't really worth getting worked up over.

After all that, I took some time to think about how to mount the Emmert vise. Calm down... it's not happening for a little while yet.

Ultimately, I decided that there was no point in mounting the thing if the top wasn't flat, for various reasons. So, I spent a good chunk of time planing the hump out of the middle of the bench top. The center was something close to 1/8" higher than the ends. Across an 8' top, that's a lot of wood that has to come off. It was a busy day, with a lot of sweating involved.

 Eventually, it was flattened out. While cleaning out the drawers, I came across a bottle of oil for finishing the top, that had come packaged with the bench when I bought it 3 years ago. So, I put on a good coat of finish, and called it a day. My apologies for the garish yellow... I swear it doesn't look like it was finished with a highlighter. Notice the blast radius of the shavings on the floor... I took a lot of wood off of the top.

Such a small bench...

So, the workspace at home is expanding in a mildly containable way. Next to the bench is a rolling stack consisting of a small festool vac, with a vacuum attachment set, a Bosch jigsaw, and a festool drill, in a larger-than-stock container, so that I have room in there for a belt pouch, some bits, etc.

On the bench is the carcase for the new chest of drawers project, all of the drawer stock, and various other things. There's a tool chest on the shelf, along with some cauls, and a roll of chisels that belongs in the tool chest. (The chisels belong in the chest, the roll does not) But I need to make a rack for the chisels first, so that they don't rattle around and bang into each other.

Last night I ran into one of the home woodworker's main problems... night-time. I started futzing, and sawing a small piece for the chest of drawers when I was reminded that it was getting late, and I was being very noisy. And by the way, are you going to sweep all that up?

Grumble, grumble.

The other problem I'm running into is real estate. it's only a 4.5' bench. So space for projects is very limited. Space to work while keeping projects on the bench? Even more limited.

More as it comes.

New Bench compromise: the outcome.

On a topic separate from the sporadic schedule I've had lately, I feel the need to offer another apology, or at least confess to a bit of embarassment. The two posts that I made in June and July do a wonderful job of displaying the mental process I'm going through with regard to how to re-fashion my work habits. But going directly from "NEW BENCH PROJECT!" to "NO BENCH PROJECT!" is just a bit mean.

For most wood geeks, I think that talking about a new bench project is almost... but not quite... a little like talking about sex. Most woodworkers will perk up when the topic comes up. The finished bench is kind of like the new baby, and everyone likes to see, and it's very exciting in it's potential. But I have to admit that I think the process of making the new baby is a little more intriguing to observe sometimes. So the abrupt turnaround is a bit of a tease.

Here's the final compromise. The bench I built a couple of years ago has been shortened, and is now in my front hallway. And the Sjoberg I bought years ago is my bench in the shop. It's an ugly monster, and I'm going to go through the paces of tuning it up. That means fixing a few of the drawers, flattening the top, lowering the working height, and a few other things.

The plan is to design specific projects to build at home, mill up rough stock in the shop, and process the parts at home. One of the things I noticed almost right away is that there are a lot of small details that I'm used to having around, or not needing at all, due to the availability of machines. one of the first details is simply having cauls to work with, or work on, or use for clamping. So I roughed those out at the shop, and planed them to size last night. I also need to make some bench hooks and a shooting board.

The first furniture project is to finish up a small chest of drawers that's been languishing since this post, which went up about a year and a half ago. I glued the carcase up then, and if you look through old pictures of the shop, you'll see it up on the shelves, waiting for me to get it wrapped up. I milled up drawer pieces the other day, and I'll post pictures when I bring it all home.

The despicable art of compromise. No new benches for now.

So, I did some soul searching about the proposed new bench projects. The short version is, I'm putting them off until I feel more secure in the idea that it's reasonable to build two new benches. That day won't come for a while.

Ready to bring home

The home bench project... I spent weeks poring over all of my workbench books, and sketching out versions of modified, shortened shaker style benches.  I really wanted a bench with a lot of storage, to hold all of the household tools and project "stuff." But the point of having a bench at home is to get my hand skills back up to snuff, and try a few new things that have intrigued me for a while now. I'm more interested in getting right to work than I am in detouring further into new-bench fantasies. So I decided that the best solution was to simply chop down the bench I had at the shop. The work is done, and the most noteworthy part of the exercise was using Chris' huge old Oliver sliding table saw. It's a terrifying machine that gives me the willies. But it's incredibly capable, and it's impossible for me not to be impressed. Cross-cutting a 2.5" thick, 24" wide maple top is not a small thing, I don't think. This machine thinks otherwise.

Shape of things to come

And the shop bench... well, when the shop is more profitable, the shop will be able to afford a new bench. I have many ideas. In the meantime, while my regular bench has been chopped and taken home, I do still have an 8' Sjoberg Elite that I can use. I thought it was nice when I bought it. It has since been moved to my shop equipment shit list. I have a list of issues with this bench, not the least of which is that it's been pretty unstable. At this point, it's moved back to something more closely resembling flat, so I feel reasonably comfortable in resurfacing it. But 2 years ago it was warped enough that re-flattening would have taken out something around 1/4" to 1/2" of the overall thickness. Had I done so, and then allowed it all to stabilize again, I'd have lost another 1/4" in flattening it now. I've thought about touching it up and selling it, but the truth is that I have better ways to spend my time. So I'll make it work, until I feel good about building something better.

I could bash this bench all day, but it's possible that I'm just being an overly fussy prick about something that will still do the job. It's big, it's heavy, and it's thick enough to support the massive Emmert, I think... It's long enough to be useful, and it does have some pretty hefty bench dogs. And now that it's a few years old, the wood may have seasoned enough that it will be pretty stable. I can hope, anyway. For now, I'm planning the Emmert install... and working on more profitable things in the meantime.

Veritas Twin Screw Vise... My modifications and supplemental user's manual

Heads up to the reader: This will be one of those technical entries that's up for the sake of posterity, but will be incredibly boring and irrelevant to anyone without this particular piece of equipment. So feel free to skip this one and move on to the other postings, which will talk more about chairs, and shop stuff.

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This afternoon I was in the shop working on chairs and trying to mount something in the vise. But the problem I've been having with this particular vise is that both screws have been turning independently of each other.

Mechanically, the root cause for this is grub screws that aren't able to bite into the shaft of one of the screws. The left handle is pinned through the end of the screw shaft, but behind that, there's a gear that drives/is driven by a chain. The gear on this side clamps to the shaft using 2 grub screws, oriented at 90 degrees to each other. The chain goes around this gear, linking the left screw to the right screw. The right side has a similar gear, but the gear is hooked directly to the handle by way of a retractable pin. The pin is there to allow the two screws to operate independently, within a small range. All things being equal, this arrangement would work out fine. But, all things are not typically equal, and the issue here is that the retracting pin is a stronger mechanical interface than 2 grub screws. (Thin as that pin happens to be, it's still a better lockup than friction.)

The other root cause of my issues is that I'm simply stronger than the average guy, and I've been known to really crank down on the vise from time to time. The result is typically the same... something's in the vise, and both sides need to be individually tightened... and as a result, the grub screws scrape a little bit around the shaft. Repeat this issue a few times, and there's a small groove around the shaft, requiring that I remove the chain cover, and re-tighten the screws. There's an access window to do this, but it's a dumb idea. My logic is this: The screws should really only be tightened when the vise is actually aligned. And the best way to align the vise is to clamp it shut, tighten both sides equally, and then secure the screws where they are.

Well, eventually I tired of all this nonsense, and simply let both screws turn independently. There are certain advantages to using the vise this way, but the truth is that really, it's just better to use the thing as it's designed to be used.

So, I pulled it apart again today, and fixed the problem once and for all.

Famous last words...? Let's simply say that I have modified the vise to alleviate my issues, and pending further notice, it's working a lot better... but there are specific techniques that bear mentioning.

After removing the cover and aligning the vise per usual, I took one of the grub screws out. Using a transfer punch, I marked the location of the hole on the shaft. I then disassembled everything on the end of the shaft... Handle yoke, gear, and Jaw plate all came off. I then drilled an indentation into the surface of the shaft, to make a socket that the grub screw can mate with, and that will give more purchase to the screw. I put the gear back on, tightened the screw in place, and marked for a second indentation for the second screw. Removed the gear, drilled the shaft, and reassembled everything.

What I should have done in retrospect is used thread lock, too... but I'll do that another time if the gear develops any slop.

What I also should have done is taken better pictures, but it didn't occur to me until afterward that this was worth putting up, so the best I could do was to remove one of the grub screws. You should be able to see the socket I drilled out by looking through the hole where I removed the screw... if you click on the picture above.

In theory, this modification will give the grub screws a mechanical hold, and not just a friction hold, on the shaft. And, in theory, this end will now have a much stronger lock than the small sliding pin on the other handle. The pin is fairly small, and I've heard stories of them breaking... which is probably why a spare pin is included.

So... new vise operating procedures.

Now that the gear for the left screw has such a stronger lock on the shaft, I think it's a safer bet to use that one to tighten the vise with. The risk is that I'll tighten too hard on the right handle, and shear the pin.

So, from now on, I'll do most of the holding work towards the left of the jaw, and tighten with the left handle. The right handle should be able to follow along perfectly well, and it still has the crank handle for quickly running the jaw in and out.

Last technique, one I figured out while running each screw independently... It's possible to exert a lot more gripping force on a board (or anything else) outside of the left hand screw. (As opposed to using the space between the screws) I set up the object to be held, to the left of the left hand screw, and tighten the vise down normally. Then, I thread the right hand screw counterclockwise to move the right side of the jaw outwards. Basically, I'm using the width of the jaw as a long lever, pivoted on the left hand screw. This technique is NOT good for massive movements, and certainly not good for holding tapered work, because the design of this particular vise doesn't really allow for that. But disengaging the sliding pin on the right handle will allow the gear on that side to disengage completely, so the right hand screw can operate independently, and lever the right side of the vise outwards just enough to add a lot more pressure to whatever's being held.

(A more visual explanation is here)

Other modifications:

I made a few small design changes to the way I installed the handles. First, rather than drilling all the way through for the crank handle, I installed a threaded insert in the handle. I just think it looks cleaner. I had to shorten the crank handle bolt accordingly, but that was pretty simple.


Second handle modification. I noticed right away that using the crank handle means locking the handle in place so that it can't roll. There are brass thumbscrews that come threaded into each handle yoke, but I knew right away that these would have issues keeping the handle from spinning if they were only being used on the surface of the wooden handle, with the end result of a scratched up, screwed up looking handle, and an ongoing difficulty in using that crank handle. So, I drilled a hole in the center of each handle, and inserted a brass shelf pin socket. I think they're made by Vertex, or one of the other premium brass hardware suppliers. These sockets have holes drilled in them that are 1/4" in diameter, which fits the brass thmb screws very well. They do a great job of keeping the handles secure, and they keep the crank handle from rotating the right handle around. AND they look a lot nicer than simple holes drilled in the wood, which would most likely wallow out over time.

Vein slapping junkie

So, I've been using the bench I built last year for a while now. It's great, I love it.

But, my recent foray into chairs, and chair shaping has gotten me thinking again. You see, I've been sitting on yet another vise for a while, that I've been wanting to use, but hadn't gotten around to using yet. I've got an Emmert pattern-maker's vise. In essence, these are some of the most versatile vises known to man, and they can swivel in several different directions. In short, they're perfect for weirdly shaped parts, such as those that I'm making now. And I've found myself thinking about it while shaping these parts.

Installing one of these monsters is a trial in and of itself. That's one reason I'd put it off. And they're incredibly heavy, and have been known to warp 2" thick bench tops over time. That's why I haven't wanted to mount it to the bench I have now. I've been thinking about mounting it to the Sjoberg that I've been keeping in the machine room, maybe, and swapping benches after that. But I haven't gone through with that yet.

Then I was bouncing my merry way around the web, and was reminded of yet another vise I'd had my eye on for a while... (http://www.khalafoud.com/media/benchcraftedtailvise.wmv) and had to pull myself out of my reverie. I think it's quite possible that I have a woodworking tool problem.

"Hi, I'm James, and I'm a tool junkie..."

A good day

First thing this morning, I got my clamp racks installed. I wasnt' able to get all of the clamps under the bench, but I moved enough of them that the ones remaining on the old table don't bother me as much... a few days ago they were wrapped all the way around 3 of the 4 sides of the table. Now most of them are at either end of my workbench, with some of the larger ones at the ends of the table. That's good enough for me.

For another hour or two I put away small things, and swept, and cleaned. And just as I was running out of things to do, Don yelled over to me that we should work on the doors that we built a month and more ago to separate the machine room from the bench room. Really, we'd planned to have the doors from the beginning, but here, 9 months later, we still hadn't gotten them into place. They've been leaning against the door jambs since we made them, and that's been pretty much it. So, Don had the right idea.

Being slow on the uptake, I resisted at first, since I knew that it meant taking them apart to work on the hinges, but once that was done, we proceeded to trim them down and mount them.. .and the difference was amazing. The space looks done, in a way that it hadn't before. We've been most of the way for a long time... but this felt really good. It looks like it was supposed to, way back when.

Last but not least, there is good news... there are new falcons. I don't know how old they are, but when I looked over at the building where they normally perch, I counted three. I don't know if it's two new ones and the male, or three new ones... but since we only had two before, and the female wasn't there, we have at least two new peregrine falcons in the world. I looked through my binoculars for a minute or two, and saw one of them walking around with his wings in the air, looking intently at something through a cloud of what must have been flies over a not so recent meal... so I'm guessing he was hungry, but not that hungry. Or maybe he's just the goofy one of the clutch, I don't know.

I wound down the afternoon by looking through a book on Nakashima furniture with Don, while we had a beer and tried to come up with a few ideas for new projects.

All in all, a good day... and my work space is officially cleaned out and organized, and ready to get back to work.

New clamp holders

One of the things I planned to get rid of in this reorganization is a small table that my grandfather made way back when.

Well, let me rephrase... I don't want to get rid of it, I just don't want to use it to hold a pile of crap anymore. Until this past weekend it was used to hold the big parts bin, a tool chest for sockets and wrenches, all of my smaller clamps, and carrying cases for hand held power tools.

Well, the cases are in the shelves of the cabinet now, the parts bin is in the bottom section, and while the tool chest is still looking for a home, the clamps are the last thing to get moved.

Since I took my big wooden tool chest out of the bench, it's become a bit lighter, which isn't really something that's desirable in a workbench, so yesterday I dovetailed a couple of cross-pieces into the frame underneath, and today I'll attach my small clamp racks to those. It'll put the clamps closer to where I need them, so I won't have to walk around things to get to the cart/table that's been holding them. And, it'll add weight to the bench, which is a good thing, too.

Final details

So, the bench was pretty much built, but I had a few other details to attend to before it's really complete.

First and foremost, I was having issues getting the end vise to line up squarely with the end. I found two problems:

One, the casting on the rear jaw was uneven, so it wouldn't sit squarely. It took some wrangling to shim this out, and I still should have done a better job of it. I'll revisit that when I have time.

And Two: the end of the bench wasn't actually square. I was surprised by this at first, but in the end, not so much. My finicky nature says the block should have been cut squarely. But really, it was mostly square, within a reasonable tolerance for most activities. And like so many other things in this world, if you're really going to be THAT picky, you're either going to have to pay more to get it that way, or you're going to have to do the modification yourself. No big deal, in the end. So, I squared it up with the use of a fancy saw and a router.

Last real modification on the bench for now, I needed a bigger chop for the end vise, and then to drill dog holes everywhere, to enable me to handle clamping and working with large panels. BUT, I wanted a lot of them, and I wanted them to be evenly spaced. So, I had to make a fancy jig to help drill them squarely, and regularly. The whole thing rested on the use of a very long drill bit, which would be going through roughly 6 inches of wood at the deepest, so I used a lot of paraffin to lube the bit when it got hot. As a result, the inside of the holes for my drilling jig (shown to the right) feel like a candle... there's a lot of wax in there.

In other news, my efforts to organize are beginning to bear fruit. I was sitting at the bench the other day, going over various lists I'd compiled, and for once, the way I'd compiled them enabled me to bring them all together in a meaningful way, and it sent me off, working happily and efficiently for most of the day. The only problem is that the list had an end... so now I'm making new lists. One for every project, and each potential project starts out the same way... with a page with the title of the project in sharpie marker across the top, and then tucked into a folder, to be fleshed out later... at home, or on the train.

In the immediate future, I have a couple of projects. One, is a set of shelves for my Dad. I have to go to his place soon to measure the space, and find out what he wants. Two, I have a trestle table to build on spec for a store that said they might buy them. Three, I'm working on building a shave horse, which is a work holding fixture that's very useful for chair parts. I've been wanting to build one for a while now. So, it's time to do so. Once the immediate, paying jobs are out of the way, I'll be moving on to making chairs, since my sister indicated that she's in the market for chairs... or would be, if I'd build some.

New Bench!

So, this is the new bench. I bought the top slab back when I was still working my retail job, and I bought the vise kit at a previous retail job, on sale for half off of the employee discount price. I basically got it for a song... and I've been carrying it around for years. The frame for the bench is just plain home center 4x4 fir lumber, because it was cheap. The new bench is basically a hybrid of my old bench, and the Holtzappfel design that Chris Schwartz wrote about in Popular woodworking.

My first bench was built in the basement of my old apartment, on top of a pair of 2x12s that were resting on sawhorses. It was modeled after Ian Kirby's arts and crafts style bench, and has worked out pretty well for me. The previous version has held up pretty well considering that I built it before I really knew very much. The wedged mortise and tenon joints look like the dog-ugly work of an amateur, which they are: I was a new woodworker when I built it. But the ugly joinery is also very stoutly made, so whatever it lacks in cleanliness, it more than makes up for in strength. 4 years and two moves later, it's still very strong, and very flat.

The construction details of the new bench are similar to the old bench, with a few differences, and with a lot more attention paid to fit and finish details. The joinery is much more cleanly and solidly done, though I did use wood filler to fill in a few cracks and things. I varnished the base, which I hadn't done on the old bench, except for one spot as a test area. One small detail I wanted to point out somewhere... the stretchers on the old bench got raised up to clear ductwork when the bench was being used as an outfeed table, they used to be lower. The stretchers on the new bench are deliberately close to the floor... so I can use the pallet jack to move it around if I choose. : )

The other influence on the new bench is a bunch of recent work by Chris Schwartz, and other recent magazine articles on bench building. The front is built to be a continuous plane, including the front faces of the legs, the stretcher, the rear jaw of the face vise, and the front edge of the bench top. I still need to plane the front of the stretcher to really get it 100% in plane, but I think for now, it's good enough. The general idea is that large work can be easily secured to a planar surface to facilitate edge work. It was a little challenging, in that I had to figure out how to work in the rear jaw of the vise. I had to notch the jaw to fit around the leg, and notch the top to fit around the jaw. But I think the end result is worth it.

The old version of the bench was built so that the edge of the top hung out in front of the legs, and while it was workable, it wasn't ideal. I used it mainly for small joinery and such, but larger projects were challenging, and rarely done well on that bench. The old bench has a small skirt on the front edge that is good to clamp to, which this one doesn't have, and I may change that at some point. The front of the leg is a clamping surface, and the wide twin screw vise will probably eliminate the need for a clamping skirt anyway, so I think it'll be a functional bench as is. And if I add that skirt, I may also add a length of T-track for holding things to the bench. But again, probably not necessary as it is.

Lastly, I put a quick release vise as an end vise. I got comments from my shop mates about how the twin screw vise is supposed to be a tail vise. So, basically, it sounds like I put the vises on completely backwards. Again, chalk it up to Chris Schwartz. He made a very valid point that quick release vises make great tail vises, because there's more of a need to move the vise in and out by more than a few handle turns, and a QR vise makes this a lot easier. And honestly, I like the idea of the twin screw vise for dovetailing more than I like a QR vise, which I'd end up racking anyway, with half the board hanging out of one side, needing to be clamped to a skirt, or clamped across the top of the bench. So I think this configuration will work best. We'll see though.

At present, I have my tool chest from school installed in the bench, to keep my tools close, and to weight the bench down so it doesn't slide too easily. I may end up moving it out and building a new set of drawers that are more solidly made. I'm worried that the nice chest will get beaten up, for one. For two, my bench back at school back had drawers that I could pull out to support work while I was trying to get it clamped up. So a future chest would probably have drawer sides made of Ash or Oak or something durable, so that they could support boards without being beaten up too badly.

Last but not least, there are a few other details I want to attend to. I need to drill dog holes in the top to work with the vises, and to work with other aftermarket accessories. I also want to add in a pop-up stop to plane wood against, which I had on the previous bench. I think I want to make it out of a really cool exotic wood, I just haven't figured out which wood to use yet. I think I'll add in other small details, like vise handles, out of whatever wood I end up using. But that's optional detail work for later.

Bird's eye view.

So, life in the shop is moving into a hapily productive phase. Things are all in place for the most part, and while there are still final details to attend to, like doors between machine and bench room, we have what we need, and we're moving forward.

Locals are on notice that there will be a shop-warming/ "wetting-in" of the place in the near future. Of course, a shop warmining implies a warmer shop, which is an issue, but we'll figure it out soon enough.

First on the list of things for me to work on is a new bench. I have had a laminated slab of butcher block sitting around waiting for, oh, almost 2 years now, and it's high time I got around to putting it to work. I also have a kit for a fancy twin-screw vise that I bought on sale when I worked at a local woodworker specialty store, I'd say about 3 or 4 years ago now. I've been sitting on it, not needing it, or not having time to put it together... and now I've pulled it out, too. Part of the reason I'm building the bench is because I've had all these parts sitting around. But another reason is that I've really been wanting a new bench for a while. At the old shop, I was using a huge Sjoberg bench that I bought when I first moved into my old shop building. It's huge, heavy... and warped. I'm pretty sure that the manufacturer used really green wood when they built it.

Anyway, the result is that when I want a flat surface to clamp something to, I can't use that bench. If I'm gluing things up, and I want them to be flat, I have to clamp to a flat surface. So, that bench is out.

In the shop now, I've been using an old bench that I built before I went to North Bennet. It's good enough for most things, and it's very flat, but I've learned a lot since I built it, and there are some new details I want added in to the mix.

It's basically a refined version of the old bench. Construction details are the same, but the details will be different, and I'm taking it to a higher level of finish than I did with the old one.

I'll take more pictures of the new bench when I go back to work after the holidays. Since this I've varnished it, and I'm in the process of trying to understand how the vise goes together. It has an 8 page instruction booklet, so there's a little more to it than just bolting it in place. But I have faith that it will be very cool when all is said and done.

Merry Christmas and Happy Buckets to all.