Despite my love of the drill press for building benches, you don’t need one to bore dead-straight holes for your dogs and holdfasts.
When I need to add a hole to a benchtop that is already assembled (or is a large slab), I use the jig shown above with a brace and auger. I call it the “Cletus Bore-drunk” jig because you can bore a hole dead straight even if you have been drinking (thanks to several people for the in-shop testing).
The jig is three pieces of wood: A flat platform that you can clamp to the benchtop, a thick block of wood (about 3” thick) with a dead-straight hole bored through it and a wooden fence that registers against an edge of the benchtop.
It is much like an oversized doweling jig.
The photo above is about 14 years old from when I was building the “$175 Workbench.” I usually make these jigs when I need them and then recycle their parts when I’m done, so I don’t have any of these jigs on hand.
This week I will install a leg vise on my Holtzapffel workbench in our sunroom, which is my shop on the first floor. I’ve had a twin-screw vise on Holtzapffel since I built it six years ago; when I’m done with this leg vise, I’ll be able to switch between leg vise and twin-screw with ease.
I’ve wanted to add a leg vise to the Holtzapffel for a long time, but I waited for one single reason: I wanted to use a Benchcrafted Classic metal screw on the bench. Jameel and Father John Abraham have been developing this vise for a long time, and I finally received my hardware while I was away in either Alaska or Maryland.
I’m going to install the Classic screw in tandem with Benchcrafted’s Crisscross Retro, a piece of hardware I’ve been sitting on impatiently for many months now.
My hope is this will be the most highly evolved form of metallic leg vise yet.
This morning I pulled out all the bits and pieces of the vise so I could plan out the maple vise chop. Handling Benchcrafted hardware is like holding jewelry, and the Classic is equal parts “space age” and “bad-ass.” The screw has a double-lead acme thread, which moves smoothly and quickly (1/2” per rotation). That’s very fast (check out the video on the Benchcrafted site). The machining on the screw and nut are fantastically smooth.
On the other hand, the hub, Tommy bar and flange are “Parkerized” like a firearm, which protects the surface from rust and is way cooler than paint.
The Tommy bar is also thoughtfully designed. The metal ends unscrew. And the way the Tommy bar interacts with the hub is quite cool. There is a detent in the Tommy bar that intersects with a spring-loaded plunger in the hub. This allows you to lock the Tommy bar in the middle of its length for coarse adjustments. Or you can let it swing free for maximum leverage.
It’s almost like magic.
I haven’t been this excited about vise hardware in a long time. If you are considering adding a leg vise or are building a new bench this year, I recommend you take a hard look at the Benchcrafted Classic and Crisscross combination.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I know commenters are going to ask me to compare this to a wooden screw. Save your breath. It’s an aesthetic choice more than a functional one in my opinion. Wooden screws like those from Lake Erie are on par with the quality of the Benchcrafted stuff. So it’s like handplane bodies. Which do you prefer: metallic or wooden? They both work great.
If you’d like to claim that space, call Paula at 317-535-4013 or register via the school’s web site: marcadams.com.
This is the only workbench class I’m teaching this year, and I don’t have any more scheduled for 2015 or 2016 as yet. We’ll be building French-style workbenches using some awesome 12/4 ash from Horizon Wood Products.
Your bench can be up to 8’ long and incorporate any vises that you wish to purchase. The bench design will accommodate almost any vise, from the Benchcrafted products to an iron quick-release vise. The French bench is truly “open architecture.”
Warning: These classes are physical. There is heavy lifting involved. Long days. Camaraderie and brown liquor (after class) are the usual by-products of this class. I highly recommend these classes as a way to get your “dream bench” completed. The heavy equipment (a 24”-wide planer!) helps get the job done so you can get on with the task/joy of building furniture.
Hope you can join us. If we don’t have a taker, I’ll build an extra bench and sell it so I can get an extra kidney and liver installed.
For some reason I never considered a tree stump as essential workshop equipment until I met Richard Maguire.
Maguire, a lifelong furniture-maker and bench-builder, uses a stump and an axe in his shop and counts it among his essential workshop kit. I’ve always favored sawbenches (yup, I hew on them), but I am coming around to Richard’s way of thinking.
Especially after playing a few (OK, 126) rounds of the Hammer Schlager game, the best stump game ever.
This week Suzanne Ellison sent me this photo from the Victoria & Albert Museum archives. Lady Hawarden Clementina took this photo at Dundrum House circa 1858. It is a fascinating photograph. Not only for the workbench, the chest in the foreground and the awesome hats, but for the stump and the axe.
When you look at old engravings, there are going to be details that confuse. Perhaps they were drawn incorrectly. Or you just don’t have enough information to interpret the marks on the page.
Several years ago, I wrote about the French benches in the La Forge Royale catalog, which illustrates several benches with wagon vises. The images of the benches show an odd thing hanging down below the benchtops. It’s clearly a stick, but its purpose isn’t discussed in the text of the catalog.
After several years of speculation, we now know what this dangling stick is. It is the handle for the wooden screw that attaches the top and base together. Thanks to a photo from Jameel Abraham, we have this clear cut-answer.
Of course, this answer raises some questions. Does this method of attaching the top and base adequately resist the horizontal forces from the leg vise? If you built a bench like this and attached the top and base with lag screws alone, you’d be sorry. I am sorry.
Perhaps the top and base of this French bench are attached with both the wooden screw and some dowel pins. I guess I’ll never know until I get to take apart one of these benches myself.
