Workbench Wednesday – #12 (2015) Putting the Studley Replica Top to Work

After returning home from the HO Studley exhibit and reassembling the pastiche workbench I changed my mind about completely rebuilding the base.  Though the base I built originally was for the exhibit only, to display the  construction of the top slab, I found that it was actually a pretty serviceable structure for the daily use of the top.  All it needed was a little more bracing for longitudinal triangulation and it could go to work as an every-day workhorse.

I added a stylistically-appropriate skirt and sure enough it was ready to go.  The large uninterrupted flat expanse of the slab made this a favorite for assemblies and related projects where the space was particularly helpful.  There was the hole left from mounting one of the piano-maker’s vices for the exhibit, but I could live with that.

Thanks to the generosity of DrDan I had a piano maker’s face vise already in-hand, and augmented with the Shelton vise the bench could be configured to my liking, more or less.  The wheel vise remained as installed in the exhibit picture, and the Shelton was used as the end vise.

The only down side was that the top was thicker than the Shelton could accommodate in terms of the retractable dog in the moving vise jaw.  At this point I had two options; excavate the underside of the bench slab or make and extended dog to project past the top surface.  I chose the latter.

I disassembled the dog and replaced it with a new one fabricated specifically to work with the slab thickness.  I made the new dog from rosewood.

Installed the vise works just fine, or as fine as a Shelton can.  The bench is placed in the geographical center of my shop and gets used on a daily basis, performing its duties skillfully.  That is, if an inanimate object can perform, skillfully or otherwise.