Tail vises are funny things. I’ve installed many of them during the last 20 years, and I have a formula to calculate the time to do it right. Here it is:
Time to install a tail vise with precision = time to build the rest of the bench.
I’m not joking. With the exception of bolting a quick-release vise on the end of the bench, a good tail-vise-installation job takes time, concentration and effort. For this circa 1505 bench, it took me about 10 hours to build the basic bench and install the face vise.
So far, it has taken me seven hours of painstaking work (which I greatly enjoy by the way) to get the 10 critical surfaces of the bench in the same plane to install the vise’s bushing, vise nut and screw. Tomorrow I’ll install the screw, bushing and vise nut. If I’m lucky, it will take only three hours.
Good news. The threaded screws for the face vise on the Holy Roman Workbench are a couple inches below the danger zone. I’ve been working on the bench these last couple days and have found that my boyhood is well out of danger.
So today I started making the giant slot for the end vise. I began by sawing two shallow kerfs with my circular saw to help guide my ripsaw. A sharp ripsaw can destroy 4”-thick oak with little effort. This is why it’s a good idea to learn to sharpen your own saws.
After sawing out the two kerfs for the end vise, I used an auger to waste away as much wood as possible at the end of the slot. Three holes with a 1-1/8” auger did the trick. The waste block came out with only finger pressure.
Then I cleaned up things with a mortise chisel. Just like with any mortise, it’s best to clean it up from both faces to avoid splintering out the backside badly. Of course, flipping over a 300-pound bench to get to the backside is always fun (but not too difficult if you know about a little thing called leverage).
With the slot cleaned up, I called it a day. This weekend I hope to get the threaded nuts installed in the slot.
Just as expected the UPS truck arrived this afternoon with a hefty box, inside of which was the three-ring binder with the 434 pages of text from the next offering in the “Roubo” series. Once we are done reviewing it word-by-word, line-by-line, illustration-by-illustration, I will send it back to Chris and the next time I see it will be when the book is received from the bindery.
This is the view that will dominate my next ten days. The remainder of this week I will read and review the editorial comments thus far, and starting Sunday or Monday we will begin our limited engagement of the dramatic reading of the pages. I’ll be reading it out loud in its entirety including any punctuation of typesetting features while Michele follows along in the original French, consulting occasionally with her notes on her laptop or grabbing for one of her inventory of dictionaries going back several centuries.
Here we are (above) engaging in the same exercise 3-1/2 years ago for “Roubo on Marquetry.” The only difference this time is the likelihood some of the work will be done from rocking chairs on the front porch, reveling in the crisp mountain air and trying to not be distracted by the scenery.
As I noted recently in a comment to a blog post on this site, I look forward to completing the final final final review before this puppy gets to press. It has been a long road to this point.
I remember when Chris was visiting us in 2012 and my wife said something like, “If Roubo is so important, why hasn’t anyone done this project before?”
Chris: “Well, how long have Don and Michele been working on it?”
Wife: “Oh, several years, maybe four or five.”
Chris: “That’s why.” Probably unsaid, “Because nobody else was crazy enough to get it done.”
So now we are almost 10 years in and perhaps another 10 to go. By then Michele and I (and our indulgent spouses) will be ready for a rest. But for now, 10 days of Roubo Boot Camp await us.
I wasn’t happy with the “hurricane” nuts on the Holy Roman Workbench. So I sat down with a compass and French curves this morning to sketch some new nuts.
Those weren’t working either, so I put away the drafting tools and just drew the dang things on a sheet of scrap paper. Sometimes I get too deep into decoding something when the simple solution is three quick lines on a piece of paper.
These nuts are much more presentable. Though they still look like hurricanes.
The photo above shows them in a partially finished state. I didn’t want to take them all the way to done until I was sure that these nuts were suitable.
My afternoon is shot because of this rework, but at least I won’t see ugly nuts in my dreams tonight.
I made up the maple hooky-looking vise nuts for the face vise today. I’m not completely happy with the final shape – the hook on the end needs to be more fish hook-y. But they work.
First I drilled a 23mm hole for each hooky nut in a maple blank, then I tapped each hole. After I confirmed the tapped holes were true and accurate, I drew their shape around each hole. Then I sawed them out and shaped them with a coarse rasp.
The chop for the vise is off-fall from cutting the notch in the benchtop. I planed up the chop (the inside face is purposely planed so it is slightly convex) and applied adhesive cork to the inside face of the chop and between the threaded screws glued to the benchtop.
Then I flipped the bench on its feet and have it a test run. No surprise: the vise worked as expected.
The vise screws poke out about 4” from the jaw of the vise, so I might need to ask Peter Follansbee to spoon-carve me a cup to wear while working at the bench. While I have no further plans to reproduce, I also don’t want to mangle my soft bits (like I did when reproducing Moxon’s face vise).
With the face vise working, I’m turning my attention to the end vise and the gorgeous hardware from blacksmith Peter Ross and Lake Erie Toolworks.
