My guess is the wood craft bench does not keep the legs flush with the front and back faces of the bench - that would be a relatively easy change to make on the fly and then makes it possible to later add a leg vise should you want one. Round dog holes within 2" to the front edge of the bench spaced 4-5". He argues for legs that are flush to front and back face of the bench, using a traditional face vise as a tail vise keep the width in the 22 to < 24" wide range and as long as your shop can reasonably accommodate (7' to 8') unless you are a boat builder. Go to the library and checkout the Schwarz book. So get on with it keep it simple and just build the Woodcraft bench and be happy. In a few months or years you might use it primarily as an outfeed table or an assembly table, but if you are currently working off a door slab thrown across a couple of saw horses, having a bench with a 3 1/2 thick top and 3 1/2 x 3 1/2 inch thick legs is going to be a huge upgrade. ![]() Building a simple, basic bench is great next step for you. If you don't have a reasonably solid, flat surface for securing and holding work you will struggle. Your first bench probably won't be your last. And I haven't even spent any time talking about how much time you could spend settling the question as to what species of lumber to use. Honestly I just don't understand how anyone can build a bench without investing a couple of months in obsessing over it. Then you have to spend weeks agonizing over leg vises, quick release vises, shoulder vises, metal vises, vises with wooden screws, bench craft hardware or the hovarter vises. Logan Cabinet shop has one on an English workbench and there are undoubtedly hundreds of others. You also have to check out various You Tubes vidoes on bench builds, including this one: on viceless workbenchĪnd this one on the Maguire Workbenches. If you don't stay up past 1:00 am doing this a couple of nights, you aren't doing it right. Then you need to spend a several hours a night for a couple of three weeks looking at hundreds of workbenches that other's have built. Lon Schleining and The Workbench Book: A Craftsman's Guide from the Publishers of FWW by Scott Landis. You need to go to the library and check out the "Workbench Design Book" by Christopher Schwarz and the The Workbench: A Complete Guide to Creating Your Perfect Bench by There are several good books on workbenches that you should read before building a bench. My benchtop is ~3-1/8" thick (no apron) and I had to actually add a spacer under the top to get the jaws to sit below the benchtop (mine is an Eclipse 10" QR vise) You may find you don't even need a tail vise.Īs for the front vice, larger cast-iron vices will have a jaw depth of at least 3-1/2", so there won't be any issue. I would take advantage of the class, get the bench built, then worry about adding vices. I can't speak directly for other tail vise designs, except to say that there is almost certainly a way to make anything work. I think this is the best way to do it, but it is totally possible to add the recesses and gap after the fact (Chris Schwarz's blog has a brief description of doing this to an existing Roubo), and just drill holes for round dogs. I installed a Benchcrafted wagon vise as a tail vise, and in the normal installation procedure you modify the front two laminates of the benchtop prior to glue up - on mine, the second lam from the front is made into a dog strip, and is cut shorter than the others to leave a gap for the moving block. This really depends on the particular vices you want to use. Am I wrong about this or will this indeed be a lot of work? Or are there other good options for adding a tail vise?Īnd then on the face or front vise, will I have problems due to the top being 3 1/2" thick with no skirt? When I look at installation instructions for front vises, it looks like the tops are thinner than 3 1/2" and then there is a front skirt added. From what I have seen online, it looks like I would need to do major excavation of the top to install a tail vise. Since I am new to woodworking, I am not really confident in my ability to add a tail vise to this top. ![]() So the top will be one solid 3 1/2" thick surface. They say there will not be time during the class to customize the top to fit any specific vises. All of this sounds OK to me except for the following. The legs look like they are made from 2 laminated 2s4s and are therefore about 3 1/2" x 3 1/2". The top will be laminated 2x4s and will be about 3 1/2" thick. I have seen an example of the bench that we will build and it does look sturdy. I am enrolled in a class at the local Woodcraft where we will build a workbench and I have some questions and concerns that I am looking for help and advise on.
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