Andy,
I built that Frid bench about 10 years ago too and I hear ya on all points. I really don't dislike the shoulder vise, in fact it really fits in well with the way I work. But I do miss a conventional vise sometimes and I've often felt an Emmert clone on the opposite end from the tail vise would be great. Three vises on one bench might be a bit over the top... but still ;)
David P.S. Its always good to have a smallish/medium sized mach>
Friend of mine has one of these as his only woodworking vice. It's very useful, but a bit of a pain to use. You don't often want to tilt or wedge it, but there's no good "off" position where the wedging cam will sit still with the jaws square. It's a bit slow to work with, as you're always having to tweak it back square.
It's nice and wide for an iron vice though.
I'm a bit wary of that - most of my work is in one of two materials; oak or welded steel. I'm pretty paranoid across cross contamination between them and iron staining. Mainly I use two workshops, 40 miles apart - I think that's enough separation! For cleanliness I keep the small metalworking vice that's in the woodworking shop on my old bench, not the "clean" bench.
Here's the one I built, with the traditional shoulder vise and Veritas Twin Screw vise on the end. Theres a link near the bottom of the page that'll get you to the index for the evolution and construction of this one.
One of the most awesome benches I've seen online, that was made personaly. "DAS BENCH!"
Alex
Ten Que Beddy Much. Stop by the shop when you've got an hour and I'll show you all the "features" I cleverly made (read screw ups that got more or less fixed and now called features/enhancments) Here are some OOPS examples while doing this bench
To err is human. To not cut on the waste side is dumb! (MARK THE WASTE SIDE! MARK THE WASTE SIDE!)
charlie b
I understand you, but it is the heavy bulk and thick design idea, the mass of it that makes it entirely substantial to me, Jaaaaa, ist DAS BENCH!! With the drawers it is based on a shaker type design, correct?
Already I bought my top maple of 8/4 stock and have screwed-up, 8 1/2" wide boards x
121" long cut in half the distance, 60" and 61", the ends that had some cracking, marked for that 1" cut-off I goofed on one and had to glue and clamp it, last night.When I did the ripping, I was tought to go thirds-up from the lower side, raising the blade 1/3 at a time through that1 3/4" (a donated 12" Fuang Yung table saw LOL), and a few of the boards slightly bowed on me damn it, all on their own. One board came out tapered from
2 1/4" on one end to 2 1/8" on the other for crap's sakes, but it is the up and down width and not the clamping faces. Maybe I should buy more? naaaaawwwww.... sheesh, wait a minute... maybe so!Now what I need is a layout pattern for dog holes, that work with vises. I have a
7"x4"12" deep woodworker's antique made by American Scale Co. KS, MO, from WAY back, all there except the sliding dog's threaded handle. That should go on the front.Now I need an end vise, I would like a twin screw but can's afford the Veritas one, and Rockler has discontinued theirs. So, do you think two shoulder vise screws can be mounted side by side on the same face of the end of the bench and work well that way? Maybe I could buy two bicycle sprocket gears, have the local machinist bore the centers to fit the shafts and weld them on, whaddya think? (Sorry for SO MUCH text, but I am in serious learning mode here)
Alex
Very, very nice!!
Andy Dingley wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
recommended in the States, I have a (extremely current, extremely reasonable) source of kiln-dried oak. I am also becoming well aware of the limitations (sturdiness, mostly) of my first bench, built of construction timber three years ago.
Would you do yours in oak again? Or Euro beech, or similar?
Patriarch
I'd think about changing the shoulder vice, but I've no complaints about the benchtop material.
I used oak because I was offered it basically for free. I didn't really _need_ a new bench right that minute, but clearly these couple of 2" boards had "new bench" written on them. The only timber I actually bought was the 3x4 thick stuff for the ends.
With a year's wear on the top I've put a couple of saw nicks into it but it's holding up pretty well. No impact or surface damage or staining. I don't often use it for assembly, but when I do so I pad the assembly table with a blanket of quilted cheap fleece (printed with little snowmen and teddy bears, which is why it was so cheap !). I don't hold with this idea of "soft benchtops" to avoid damage.
I could have had beech. There's a fair bit of 2" beech around, and it's a little cheaper than the oak. If I was paying for it, it's £25/cube foot vs. £35/cube foot for 2" boards..
Maple is unheard of round here. I have a little of it, but it's skinny, lumpy boards. Anything big enough to build a bench would be imported, and the imported timber shop is twice the price of the local guys.
Andy Dingley wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
Thanks for relating the experience, Andy. The material I picked up today has too much character to consider turning into a benchtop. It's got a higher calling...
Patriarch
Andy...
Your post provides me with yet another opportunity to display my ever growing ignorance...
Is wood generally sold by the cubit foot?
If sold in metric sizes, what are the most common nominal/actual dimensions?
Morris Dovey wrote in news:XPXmd.32$ snipped-for-privacy@news.uswest.net:
A board foot is simply another, less generally understood, volumetric measure, is it not?
Patriarch
That oak is a sweet find for you! but I am curious about the cube foot, would that measurement be the same as our board foot of 1"x12"x12"? If so I do find myself blessed since I can get Euro beech for $6.95/bf. Your £35 ='s $65! ... which is quite outrageous unless that cube means 12"x12"X12"... then, in our B/F this is $5.41 each. Not bad for here. I paid $4.79/bf for my 32/bf of maple for my bench top.
Alex
On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 02:43:10 GMT, patriarch calmly ranted:
What higher calling is there? A benchtop is seen, appreciated, touched, and used on a daily basis.
Larry Jaques wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
Figured wood deserves to be seen, not cursed. A bench top needs to be flat. Dead flat. Forever.
That function has beauty in itself. And there are better means of achieving it than figured wood with a high tangential expansion coefficient.
I'll score some affordable maple soon enough. And I'll coat it with Waterlox, in your honor. ;-)
Patriarch
On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 01:39:09 GMT, patriarch calmly ranted:
Don't you have assembly tables for that?
Yeah, that 1.148" diameter 0.020" dip could really screw up a glueup. (If you're one of those who glues on his benchtop.) And it would really warp that 8/4 stock you're flattening with the little 24" plane. ;)
Bueno, bwana.
Depends what sort of wood you're talking about.
Big stuff, odd trees, logs, waney edged boards, gets sold by the cubic foot (12 board feet). There's a lot of "finger in the air" stuff about how big a particular board measures out to be. Cube foot prices are religiously observed with no haggling, but there's a big variation in how a particular board measures up for wastage allowances, depending on who you are, how well you know the seller and when you last bought them a drink 8-)
For buying trees on a small scale (ie not whole woodlands), some people still use the "Hoppus feet" measure. This takes a few measurements off a tree and turns it into an estimated useful volume. at the level I operate (pretty small) it's common to pass a load of logs to the sawyer unmeasured, saw them up and then decide how big it was, the sawyer taking a proportion of the useful timber. Because we've had all our big native hardwood forests two hundred years ago, we're often working with farm hedges and singletons. A lot of the hardwood trees we saw today just aren't predictable for what they yield, until they've been through the bandsaw.
Sawn stuff gets a price sticker stuck on the end and you measure a length. No-one knows how that works. Our mass-market retail trade sucks.
It's still sold in imperial sizes, they're just labelled in metric. There's a lot of 19mm x 38mm around, although man-made sheets are in funny-sized 2440 x 1220mm sheets (that's still 8'x4') but the thickness is now exactly 10mm etc. rather than the old 3/8".
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