Posh woodworking vice

[brewdexta]

I'm making a Roubo bench, one of these, but trying to keep the costs down a bit, not right down, just to sensible levels.

I'm making it out of Douglas Fir, I bought the log and had it planked 4 years ago and now have it almost planed ready for making the bench. Most are made of ash or some other hard wood, but there are still lots who make them out of softwood and construction grade timber. I will be using a bit of ash and cherry here and there to tart it up.

The hand wheel and screw on the leg vice of the bench above are from a company called Benchcrafted, beautifully made but more than I want to pay. Probably about £325 each. The video shows them in action. The criss-cross vice parallel hardware is another £120, I could have made it but I'm short of time so I did buy that.

So I'm using one of these for £25 that I also bought about 4 years ago. Its from a company from York who are from Czechoslovakia.

I don't want to use the T-Bar so I did buy a cheap Chinese hand-wheel for about £15 but was a bit disappointed with the quality so I picked up this recently on the bay. It's an 8 inch bronze gate valve handle, it should be here in a couple of days, it cost 50 quid, a bit more than I wanted to pay but I think it will look the part and will be nice and heavy so have a bit of momentum when you spin it.

Dimensions of the square hole in the centre is 5/8" - 16mm and may be slightly tapered and the centre boss is 13/16", 20.5mm diameter.

Next task is to join it neatly to the screw. I can think of quite a few ways to do this, probably the easiest is to mill a 16mm square on the end of the screw where the current handle is if there is enough meat on it, tap the centre for a screw then find a bronze washer and screw, or maybe brass.

The t-bar handle appears to have something approaching 20mm coming into it so may have enough for a bit of a flat, I can always build it up with a bit of weld. I shall take the t-bar handle off when the hand wheel gets here and confirm. It may need a bit of a spacer behind it too to keep it away from the vice chop.

I've only got phosphor bronze or brass on the shelf to make the washer out of. Looking at gun metal or aluminium bronze on the bay, quite expensive, I'm guessing phosphor bronze will do?

Cheers
Andy

 

[500e]

Hell of a bench but as to saving cash!! with all those Festool boxes you are obviously a serious wood man the bench\cabinet in the background looks very nice & is it the Domino jointer resting in splendor on it.
Where is the metal shop photos

 

[brewdexta]

I wish they were mine! That's an example of what I am building, I have no idea who's workshop it is but I covet it just 'cos its tidy, this is a bit of mine after thicknessing the timber for the bench

 

[Gareth0123]

Out of curiosity did you try WDS for the hand-wheels. I've purchased a few of these 315mm aluminium with revolving grip hand-wheels from WDS and I've been delighted with the quality of them

 

[Screwdriver]

I wish they were mine! That's an example of what I am building, I have no idea who's workshop it is but I covet it just 'cos its tidy, this is a bit of mine after thicknessing the timber for the bench

View attachment 119743

Where's the cat?

Seriously though, looking forwards to seeing this progress. If there was a YouTube video series, I'd be right on it...

 

[brewdexta]

Out of curiosity did you try WDS for the hand-wheels. I've purchased a few of these 315mm aluminium with revolving grip hand-wheels from WDS and I've been delighted with the quality of them

Good find, better than the ebay garbage and not much more, here's the one I rejected, and the grip doesn't spin.

 

[Shox Dr]

You going to build a wood pellet machine to use that saw dust

 

[MattF]

It's a company called York, not from. They make good gear.

 

[brewdexta]

You going to build a wood pellet machine to use that saw dust

Now there's an idea

The youngest wants a pet mouse so that's 1% of it used up. One of the neighbours is using the rest for bedding their various animals.

 

[brewdexta]

I've done a bit more, the bronze hand wheel arrived and I've started pimping the bench a bit, I decided to personalise the vice chop and the sliding deadman.

I have a few planks of american black walnut, one has a big knot in it and some random grain, and I have loads of pippy oak, but the wife wants that for the dining table and kitchen I'm making (eventually) so I've decided to add a walnut lamination to both, firstly the vice chop.

Here's the chop on the left and the lamination on the right.

The vice chop is almost 3" thick so using walnut all the way through would soon use up all my stock, so I will face the douglas fir with walnut, I'm not sure if the slight salmon colour of the fir will go with the walnut, but it's too late now, I thicknessed the walnut and glued it to the douglas fir

The chop is a lot thicker than it needs to be now, so I will resaw it and stick it through the thicknesser and plane the white sapwood away. The vice hardware needs 2 -1/2" minimum thickness so will go for around 3"

The sliding deadman will go through a similar lamination, this needs to be about 1-1/2" thick so it will closer to 50-50 walnut and douglas fir. The other bits of walnut detail will be the cover of the tail vice and possible some other bits around that area, maybe a button for the centre of the bronze handle too, that can come later.

Talking of tail vices, I've bought a HNT Gordon vice from Australia. This may prove to be an expensive purchase. The cost of the vice is a lot cheaper than Benchcrafted and the quality is excellent, and it's easier to fit, but the carriage from Oz was dear and I have a suspicion I may need to pay various taxes on import, not sure. It arrived into the UK at Coventry on Friday night and I haven't seen it yet.

It's one of the below, I liked it because there isn't a great handle sticking out of the bench to get in the way and it means I can just glue up the top and route out a pocket afterwards, the other tail vices tend to need more work, not difficult but I am time bound. Also it is different to most of the other benches I see and we like to be individual

In and ideal world, a lot of this hardware I could have made, but I have convince the wife that I need a decent bench before I build the kitchen and dining table/chairs but she won't give me months to do it so I've taken a few short cuts by buying the kit like the tail vice and the benchcraft criss-cross. I will need different height brass dogs for the vice, I will be making them

Cheers
Andy

 

[knighty]

Now there's an idea

The youngest wants a pet mouse so that's 1% of it used up. One of the neighbours is using the rest for bedding their various animals.

you have to be careful with sawdust as bedding... not sure about small animals but puppies etc. can breathe it in and end up with sawdust where it's not supposed to be :-o
(and surgery to get it out)

 

[brewdexta]

I thinks its for poultry when the cold nights draw in, they have chickens, ducks, geese, guinea fowl, turkeys and doves so quite a menagerie

 

[brewdexta]

I'm back on this project now as it is a prerequisite for building the kitchen, basically I'm bored with using an old door on a couple of B&D workmates for woodworking, the metalwork benches are too high for woodworking and covered in grease.

The last thing I did was to buy some thrust bearings for the vice screw, glue the top and lower front stretcher laminations up and cut out the slots in the vice leg and vice chop.

Gluing up the top

clamping one of the two top sections

The two pieces of the top after going though the planer thicknesser, not my PT, I paid the guys in the wood yard to put it though their big PT, but unfortunately they couldn't stick it through their sander, 115mm was too thick. The Douglas fir has come out nice, very few knots, all tiny and stable.

The vice chop before lamination having a slot put in it for the vice mechanism to slide in.

Job done

Now back to present time.

First cut the front lower stretched to length, the Bosch radial arm saw that I bought to replace my ELU radial arm saw leaves a lovely finish, it shines.

I was going to cross cut the tenons on the mitre saw but it won't go all the way to the back at this depth, that is one limitation that the mitre saw has that I miss the RAS for. The picture shows the saw as far back as it can go if you set the depths stop to cut the tenon. Only the front of the tenon will be reached unless I pack the timber out which makes it a pain to clamp.

So decided to use the table saw instead, I spent a while setting it up and cutting scrap wood first, it's not a precision table saw, more like one step up from a site saw. I do fancy a Wadkin AGS with a sliding table eventually.

Then cut out the bulk of the waste on the bandsaw. I put a stop on the fence so I can't cut into the timber that shows.

Next job is to take the two tenons to dimension on the router table. The front stretcher is different to all the others as it has to avoid the slot for the vice and still take a hole for the bolts. All the other stretchers are similar so can be mass produced. Time to tidy up (new year's resolution!) then nip to a bar in town for a cheeky pint and pick up a sack of malt so we can brew next weekend.

Cheers
Andy

 

[maz0]

Love a bit of wood working, my old man is a joiner, the stuff he can make off the cuff makes me feel like a monkey with a rock. Would love to get a nice woodworking area set up with a bench like that for when he retires as he has always wanted to try his hand at a guitar. Cant wait to see this finished!

 

[brewdexta]

I got all the remaining stretchers and the legs cut to size and cut all the tenons slightly oversize today. Next job the mortices, then adjust the tenons to fit on the router table.

 

[bigegg]

nice! a new bench is on my to-do list for later this year.

for my vice, I've got a length of M16 (?) all thread,
I'm going to use a 4kg cast iron weight for the hand wheel.

 

[brewdexta]

nice! a new bench is on my to-do list for later this year.

for my vice, I've got a length of M16 (?) all thread,
I'm going to use a 4kg cast iron weight for the hand wheel.

That will look good, a bit of heft is what you need on the handwheel so you can spin it up

I made a bit more progress today, I laid out the legs and stretchers, good job I did as I had cocked up on the marking of the mortices on the rear right leg.

Then I morticed one leg

and trimmed the a tenon to fit with a shoulder plane

on this type of wood bench where you can use the sides to clamp work to the bench, all the stretchers and legs should be flush, this was during the fitting, by the time I had finished off planing the tenon to fit the stretcher was flush with the leg.

Once I was happy I hadn't made any monumental cock ups I went ahead and morticed all the legs. I've decide against using the router table to trim the tenons, it doesn't take long to use the shoulder plane. So given the weather I think I will be fitting all the remaining tenons tomorrow, just another eleven to do.

Cheers
Andy

 

[Hitch]

Looking forward to seeing the finished article!

 

[brewdexta]

I had a good kip last night despite the wind moving the roof tiles about, they are big grey slate (sandstone) lumps and I seem to have one that waggles. I'll have to get up there in the summer and see which one it is. So while I was refreshed I thought I would tackle the most important tenons first. These are the two belonging to the front lower stretcher, it needs to be flush with the legs as this is the main clamping surface, plus it needs to be level as the sliding deadman slides on it and if it is not level then the deadman might bind leaving it loose at one end.

First job was to clean up the bottom of the mortices, first time I have used the router plane I got last birthday. You need a couple of mill clearance at the end of the tenon to make sure the joint tightens up on the shoulders. Before

and after

Then I planed the tenons with the shoulder plane with plenty of trial fits. Left hand leg/stretcher joint is flush

and square

same goes for the right leg. I marked the right hand tenon on the stretcher up with marker pen so I don't inadvertently start planing the wrong end, and I moved the left leg well away to minimise the chance of me fitting the right mortice to the left end of the stretcher. The blood is from the chisel in the morticing machine, I can't remember doing it yesterday but must have glanced against it while sweeping shavings away.

And the front face assembled. The stretcher is level, same distance from the top of the leg to the top of the stretcher. Time for dog walk and lunch then I will set about the rear stretcher.

Cheers
Andy

 

[R-D-R]

Looking really good, I'd love a bench like that I actually have that very same picture linked in my "I want one" favourites folder!

Looking forward to seeing it finished