I’m pretty excited to be basically done with the core of my new workbench.  I finished boring the holdfast holes in the benchtop and everything seems to be in good order.  I also bought another Veritas planing stop to span the entire 22″ width of the bench, as seen above.  It’s about 8″ from the end of the benchtop.

I’ve been using these Veritas planing stops for years and, for most operations, they are fantastic.  They struggle a little bit for particularly bowed or twisted stock, but a proper bench dog makes quick work of that.  For maximum capacity, though, I bored one extra dog hole along the front edge about 4″ in from both the front edge and the end of the top.

I think the eight holdfast holes and three planing stop holes shown above will be more than sufficient for most topside work.  The holdfast holes start at 8 and 16 inches from the tail end of the benchtop and they are spaced 13″ apart along the two rows (the Grammercy holdfasts have a span of 6.5″ from center of shaft to center of pad).  The back row sits about 4″ on center from the back of the workbench.  The front row sits 12.5″ on center from the front edge.  This seems ideal to me.

I haven’t yet bored the peg holes in the front apron, but I think I know why.  The new leg vise works just so very well.

I’ve made several leg vises with pinboards before.  I’m only in my mid-thirties, but bending to adjust the pin when dimensioning stock gets old (and stiff) fast.  So I’ve gone in a different direction with this one.

I took an extra 1 1/4″ wooden screw I had on hand and made a wooden nut that would wedge against the leg.  I made a small nut at first, just as a test.  It worked great, but I still had to bend over every time to adjust it.

After passing the proof of concept, I made a second cog.  One that is large enough to protrude beyond the leg vise chop, in fact.   So instead of stooping to adjust the pin location, you just spin the cog with your foot.  It works great.

I know it’s all the rage to have legs that are flush to the front of the bench top.  But having the apron extend beyond the legs, at least in this case, makes a ton of sense.  That way, I don’t have to mortise the plate into leg.  Which sped up construction quite a bit.

I have some upcoming projects that I need to get back to.  But I hope everyone is having a great 2020 so far.

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