Making Changes To My Workbench

I got, got, got, got no time – The Guess Who

Finding time to work in the shop has been hard. What with the wife’s care, cooking, cleaning, etc. my time just evaporates. But I shouldn’t complain. It could be worse, I almost ended up without a spouse to take care of.

I may not have been doing any woodworking over the past few months but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about doing it. Mostly I’ve been thinking about making changes to my workbench. One of the things I like about the Roubo style of bench is that it is an open platform, just a slab sitting on four legs. This allows me to prototype different methods of using it without losing any of its basic functionality.

From the time I began thinking about building a workbench I questioned the need for it to have a permanently attached vise. I know there are times when having a vise is more handy than not having one. But does it have to always be stuck to the bench, in the way and for me to knock into? I’m not even going to go into what a good vise costs. Okay, just a little. Some of the best manufactured vises will set you back a few hundred dollars. Are they that much better than a shop-built model costing a fraction less? Then there is the time to install your vise, which seems to be about the same regardless of the expense unless you are simply slapping on a Record and calling it good.

So I set out to determine the best way to hold stuff if you aren’t using a vise. Awhile ago I wrote a post about Holding Methods wherein I determined the best way to hold stuff assuming you are using a vise. Now, as then, I’m only concerned about holding stuff for handtool work. If yours is a power tool bench you might want to look elsewhere.

In that previous post I evaluated almost two dozen different ways you might want to hold on to something. It’s actually much simpler than that. You need to hold a piece of wood to work on its faces, its edges, and its ends. So you really only need three holding methods. Most of the time, I realize there will be a percentage of times these three won’t cut it. I’m predicting a very small percentage.

First we’ll hold a board so you can work its face. You’ll want to flatten it, smooth it and, perhaps, thin it. You’ll need to plane across (traverse), plane diagonally and plane lengthwise. The traditional way, the way I first implemented, is to hold it by its ends between a tail vise and a dog on the bench. This works just fine when planing lengthwise on the board for its final smoothing. But when traversing the board one needs to apply pressure with the vise making it tight as possible in order to keep a hold on the piece. Too much pressure will buckle a thinner board. I don’t see how this is terribly efficient. Tell me, who holds a toothpick by its ends?

I submit that pushing the board against a stop is preferred, no unwanted pressure from unwanted directions. It’s easy enough to prototype this up on my bench with a couple of pieces of sheet goods. I’m using nice, flat MDF at the moment though I don’t know how long its edge will last. I would have preferred plywood but the stuff I get at Lowes looks more like a Pringle. When I built my workbench I took care to aligned the dog hole on the far side up with the plane stop. This lets me slide a piece of MDF up against them to make the lengthwise stop. A second sheet of MDF gets clamped along the far side as the crosswise stop.

It’s a simple matter to jam the board into the L formed by the two and have at the face of your board. It still leaves me a foot of solid benchtop which is plenty in most cases. Unless I’m working on something like a door panel, my boards are 6″ wide or less .

The second thing you want to do with your board is straighten and square its edges. If it’s a narrow board you can do this on the benchtop butting it into your plane stop. However if the board is too wide to practically work it on top of the bench then the best option, traditionally, was a face vise. So how can we do without it?

My solution is inspired by the “New-Fangled Workbench” presented in the Fine Woodworking magazine several years back. It incorporates a planing beam that moves up and down on bar clamps so as to accommodate boards or panels of various widths. This clever workbench really appealed to my geeky side but I never got around to building it, probably because it was too New-Fanglish.

Still, I believe a movable planing beam has merit so I prototyped one up for my workbench. I started out by removing the front leg vise then boring some 3/4″ holes in the left-front leg that match the height of the ones already in the right-front one.

While I had the bit out I bored another hole into the side the benchtop at a 45° angle. I’ll simply insert a length of 3/4″ oak dowel in it to create a simple yet effective planing hook (or crochet).

For the beam I bored some 7/8″ holes through either end a leftover 2×6. Into these go my Gramercy holdfasts which I can place at the proper level for the board I’m working on. Using 7/8″ diameter holes instead of 3/4″ allows for some needed slop when inserting and removing the holdfasts, a lesson I learned the hard way. It isn’t necessary to bang them down hard, they appear to hold just fine using only hand pressure to set the tension.

It’s a simple matter to position the beam to the right height then set a board firmly in the hook to plane its edge without the need of a vise.

The third part of this process involves holding the board in order to saw either tenons or dovetails on its ends. For this I built a Moxon style vise that I can mount to my workbench when needed. I didn’t build one of the fancy ones with threaded wood screws. For that I would need to first buy or build a lathe for turning the screw blanks. Then I would have had to buy the threading kit. Way too much work.

Instead I bought a couple of short F-clamps from Lowes. I knocked out the rivet from the end of the bar so I could remove the sliding part of each one.

There was some leftover maple in the scrap bin that I sawed up to make standard sized jaws. I then clamped the jaws together and mortised tight fitting slots through them. This will keep the jaws in alignment with each other. I filed the walls of the slots in the front jaws so they would be just a little loose allowing the jaw to easily slide along the vise bar. The vise works great and holds a board like a mother. It’s just a bit heavy and awkward looking clamped to the workbench.

Over the next few months I’ll find out if these simple modifications truly let me mill boards easier and faster than using vises.

- Carl