Workbench

Workbench Wednesday – Tim’s Novel Leg Vise

When Tim came over a while back to check the progress of his bench he asked for a special arrangement for the leg vise — could it be configured to rise above the bench top several inches to better accommodate carving his gun stocks and similar gunsmithing tasks?  I had already given him a vintage vise screw and nut, so I had to check out what was possible with them.  I also had a jaw from some other project that could be integrated with whatever I could arrange for the vise.

My first task was to see if/how the nut could fit into the underside of the Nicholson bench.  I took a little trimming of one edge of the nut block but it fit darned near perfect.  I would love to claim credit for this design feature genius-ness, but it was just a lucky happenstance.

Fitting the jaw to the screw took a minute or two on the spindle sander, but the screw hole through the apron was another matter.  I wanted a snug fit and the closest hole saw I had was 1/16″ underside, so I would up pending two hours rasping the hole by hand.

The arrangement of the jaw to the nut/hole allowed the jaw to protrude about five inches above the bench top, to serve in essence as an integral carving vise a la one of the bench top accessories from Benchcrafted.

A rear jaw sculpted to fit, to be bolted to the top with some vintage square head bolts, and that particular feature was finished.

PS  sometimes Photoshop and WordPress do not play well together, sorry about the photo orientation but I cannot seem to solve it this time.  If I get it figured out I will repost with the pictures corrected.