29 Dec, 2020 – Oakland, CA
Holy crap, this thing is great. Can’t wait to get busy with it.
Build Detail:
- Benchcrafted hardware ($160 as x-mas gift),
- $32 worth of 8-quarter maple,
- a $5 8’ 2×4 from Ace (milled to square with dust cuts on the table saw, glued up to be double wide)
- some left over Baltic birch
- about 6 hours
- a handful of screws
yielded clamping nirvana.
The top is just two pieces of plywood glued together and fastened to the frame with pocket screws. The frame used simple lap joints to connect the sides with two stretchers that keep it square, support the top, and enable it to be attached to the fixed jaw. I chose to hand-chop nearly 1″ deep hexagonal mortises into the fixed (inner) jaw for the 3/4″ nuts that secure the precision rolled carbon steel screws. That took the bulk of the time and included a sharpening session. This was a fairly quick and dirty build, my goal here was clamping power, not perfect fit & finish. It is square, sturdy, and strong – all I need for now. Someday I may re-build with different dimensions, all solid hardwood and more elaborate joinery.
The hardware from Benchcrafted was flawless. My one complaint is that they did not include enough of the Crubber material to completely cover the jaws as they were specified in the plans on their website. You can see I opted to cover the full clamping surface of the movable jaw, but only the center of the fixed.
Overall, I’m happy – it works really well and is a great solution for holding material. I especially love that this vise is small enough to move on/off bench or just flip up on its back edge to create space. If you don’t have one, consider it. Also, I realized pretty quickly that I can clamp a fence ~parallel to the jaws and stick a 4” wide piece of scrap in the vise to create a mini-bench dog situation. Maybe I’ll finally cut those hinges into this box tomorrow…