workholding options

This Time of Year

Around these parts (Fairfield County, Connecticut), it’s warming up. This time of year, I’m finally able to drag my workbench outside and get real some woodworking done. My outside workbench, now with new slab and tool tray, is in fact getting quite a workout. I can get a bunch done with just a pair of holdfasts and a few clamps to secure the work. Proper vises are great. But they are not absolutely necessary if you’re not cutting English style dovetails.

Nice to see the slab and tray matching so well, though.

One of my goals for this year is mastering tapered tenon joinery for staked furniture. Or at least becoming facile with it. I have experimented with reamer and tapered tenon cutter before, but in situations where strength was not a primary concern. Chairs and stools are higher leverage projects (literally and figuratively) than credenza bases and side tables.

So with a nice weekend, I might as well make some chips on the lawn with a drawknife and spokeshave to prepare some leg stock for refinement. I resolved to take the tapers further than I usually do off the drawknife. I also spent more time with the spokeshave before introducing the tapered tenon cutter. I’m not sure it was faster than doing more rough work, but the results are more consistent than my prior work.

Like so.

These legs are ash, which was split off from a small timber that checked badly while it was drying I’d have preferred the leg blanks be closer to 2″ square, but you work with that you’ve got (these are 1.65″ square). I’ll add some stretchers between the pairs of legs for extra rigidity.

Aligning the legs for the eventual stretcher.

I am also working through some old boards, some from as early as 2014 that I’ve been dragging from shop to shop all these years. Among that is a red oak 2×12 (nominal size 1.75 x 11.25). It’s about 65 inches long and I could never bring myself to cut it down into smaller boards. So as I figure out how to be precise with compound angled joinery, I might as well make another low bench. The top had cupped and bowed pretty badly so by the time it was flattened, it was only 1.5″ thick. You may not think half an inch of red oak means that much, but it does. This is a sitting bench, not a low workbench, so the little bit of flex means added comfort. But if this were to live in the shop, it would need a 2×4 glued and screwed to the underside for extra support.

Ideally, the top would be thicker than the legs.

I do all my boring and reaming by hand with a brace, so it’s much harder to overshoot an angle or a depth with the reamer that way. But it’s still important to check your angles and go slow. Doing so will ensure the exit holes on the top (ie, visible) of the seat are of consistent size and shape. In the end, some irregularities aren’t fatal to the structural soundness of the piece. But looking nice is important too.

So this is a very long way of saying, if it’s nice outside, I will drag a workbench outside and get a tan while doing some rougher work. It’s harder to rake shavings off the lawn than to sweep them up off the floor.

But such is life.

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Fixgasm (Part II)

Speaking of fixgasms, I finally got around to installing the Veritas Inset Vise in my Moravian Workbench. It’s not quite a revelation, but I’m glad I did it and it officially completes the workbench.

Works like a charm.

For those who aren’t familiar, it’s a compact, easy to install, and well made tail vise option for benchtops of pretty much any thickness of 1.5″ (38mm or so). It’s really a carriage vise or wagon vise that’s easily retrofittable into any benchtop of sufficient thickness. HNT Gordon makes a similar option, but I’ve never used one of those.

I’ve had this inset vise for a while (which was a Christmas present from my parents few years ago). It used to live in another workbench before I gave that away. Veritas/Lee Valley is not a sponsor btw (no one is, lol). They just make great tools, especially bench appliances.

Maximum capacity of 68.5 inches (1740mm or so). More if I use a clamp on the far end to gain another inch or so.

To use a tail vise of any sort, you’ll need a row of bench dog holes in line with the movable jaw on the tail vise (see above). Pinch a board on its face or edge between the dog in the bench and the dog in the tail vise and it stays put. For planing in any direction (especially traversing across the grain or at a diagonal). For mortising or other detail work on the face of the board. If the line of dog holes is close enough to the front edge of the bench, you can use it like a sticking board for use with fenced joinery planes (like a rabbeting or fillister plane).

I like a good tail vise, although series of pegs or a holdfast and doe’s foot are just as good in my book. I wasn’t sure I’d ever install the inset vise into this particular bench, but when laying out the overall size of the undercarriage. I’d gotten by just fine with those other options, but it was time to finish this off.

So now that it’s finished, I would imagine I’ll immediate move on to another workbench.

LOL. Just kidding. Not really. Maybe?

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