Workbench - Leg Vise

Over the last week, I've been working on the chop for the leg vise on my workbench.  I'm making it from a piece of 2" thick hard maple,  which made it a good workout to rip it to size by hand.  To reduce the weight of the chop, the bottom half is trimmed where it isn't used for clamping.  To make it look nice, I added a curved transition, which I cut with my new bow saw that I bought while at the Handworks Tool Show in Amana, IA a month ago.  It basically functions like a coping saw, but on a bigger scale.  I was glad to have this saw, but cutting these curves in the thick stock was a lot of work, even with the most coarse blade.

I used auger bits, chisel, and then a rasp to create the hole for the wooden screw to go through.  Then I cut a through mortise to mount the parallel guide.

The parallel guide is made from 5/8" hard maple.  It will be glued into the mortise in the chop and then it will slide through the mortise that I cut into the bench leg.  The purpose of the parallel guide is to keep the chop from racking.  Also, there is a series of holes drilled into it.  A pin will go through one of the holes to set the distance that the chop is away from the leg.  This distance should match the thickness of the piece being clamped and keep the chop flat against the piece.

Soon I should have some pictures up of the entire bench assembled and will try to include some pictures on how this vise works.

Workbench - Putting It Together

The final step before gluing the entire bench together was to prepare the front left leg to accept the leg vise.  I had purchased a wooden screw kit from Lake Erie Toolworks that I'm using for this vise, which came with a large wooden nut as seen in the picture below.  I first drilled and a 2-1/2" hole through the leg for the vise screw to pass through.  Then I cut the mortise using a miter saw followed by a chisel to clean out the waste.  This is similar to what I did when I cut the dovetails into the bench top.  I also cut a through mortise towards the bottom of this leg for the parallel guide for the vise (more on this in the next blog).

Before assembly I trimmed the joinery for the legs and bench top quite a bit.  The thought of getting everything glued up and then having the glue set before I could get the legs hammered all the way in didn't excite me.  I also drilled 3/8" holes in all the legs to accept dowels to hold the stretcher tenons good and tight.  When it came time for assembly, I made sure I had everything laid out and ready to go.  I also enlisted the help of my wonderful wife, Janel, to help get everything together as quickly as possible.  To be safe, I bought an epoxy with a 60 minute gel time to make sure I could get everything together before it hardened.  As it turned out, everything went together relatively smoothly, although I did have some trouble getting some of the oak dowels in.  Some of the holes didn't line up as well as they should and the quality of the dowels was a bit questionable. To help get the dowels in, I used a ratchet strap to pull the legs nice and tight .  We then flipped the bench on to the ground and I hammered some maple wedges into the tops of the joints to really tighten them up.  I can't tell you what a relief it is to finally have the legs in this thing and move on to another part.

Right now I'm finishing up the leg vise and will hopefully have a post on that soon.

Henry inspecting my work