The Suddenly Essential Tail Vise

Initially, I intend to use a Record No. 52 1/2 as a front vise, and bolt on another similar but cheaper knock-off Vice at the far end of the bench as an end-vise. The retractable dog built into the jaws will work with the row of dog holes I'm going to chop into the front strip of the bench. At nine inches wide, the dog holes will have to be 4 1/2 inches from the front of the bench. Not too bad...really.
Just that compromising on such a detail bothers me. Especially when this may jolly well be the last bench I'll ever find the time to nail together. And with hand tools, it's really a LOT of work.
That's it.
BUY A TAIL-VISE HARDWARE.
I am suprised to learn that the tail vise actually get used more than the front vise.
(Tail vise festering in my mind now)
Yes, I know I can get Western commissioned, China produced hardware from some giant online woodworking retailer. I'm not saying the hardware is bad, but think.. pay a little more, maybe like for the price of a good lunch, and you can get some neat Canadian cut screw and milled surfaces. Why not?

My second thought: Frank Klausz or Michael Fortune?

For the uninitiated, Klausz shows off his European bench in The Workbench Book (Scott Landis), with that regulation WOODEN tail vice. Yes, if you go back 18 generations to Hungary, Frank's great-great -great granpa would be cranking that similar screw and cussing at his apprentices. (Just kidding about the ancestrry, no offence intended to Mr. Klausz, who cuts straighter dovetails with his feet than what I'll ever do with my hands) Well, Klausz uses steel screws, while his forebears uses wooden ones. That's perhaps the only difference.

Similar hardware in Klausz's wooden tail vise. (Sniped from Veritas website)

 The dovetailed module enclosing the screw, the guides, the slides, their retainer and that cool lookin' L-shaped support called a "Tonsil" ( yes, the book has a name for most things)..All wood. All slide flawlessly to within 1/64 of an inch. Buy the screw and build an awesome looking vise with a strong acme thread( 1 1/8" screw diameter), with seventeen inch clamping capacity. Old world awesome!

That is assuming I have that kind of handtool skill.
My shop is partial outdoors (my balcony), with plenty of rain and sun;
Plenty of wood liberty; In Galoot-speak: Wo od  Movem en t .  
I shudder.

So like Michael Fortune, (the other woodworker featured in the book) I purchased:

Instead.(Picture: Veritas website)

No L-Shaped thing to complicate construction. No guides to fuss.

The whole assembly weighs about 12 pounds boxed. Without the wood added  yet.

Lesson one:
Ship the vise with the tie-bolts disassembled, or Block the assembly so nothing slides or moves during transit. Otherwise this is what happens:

Not apparent, but the threaded part of the bolt is bent from impact.

The bend made the bolt turn eccentrically in the green-colored guide plate, and I could not turn more than 1/8" without resorting to a wrench. To straighten them would be another unhappy compromise. So I brought the bolt to a hardware store. Like I guessed, it fits into a metric M8 nut. Canada, like England and France, use metric. I need M8 x 8.8 bolt, 25mm thread length. Well, no luck in the hardware store. It's ebay again at some mega bolt store. A week later, two replacement bolts arrived, straight as an arrow. Now I can screw in the thread by hand. So much for unboxing the vise.

You will not find many dimensioned plans for tail-vise hardware, since each bench's design is unique; Bench-top thickness, overhang, etc plus what the local lumberyard can offer.
While waiting for the vise to arrive, I did fool around with a sketch-up model I found online, and I must add that it was very well done. Who ever took the time to draw it, Thank You.
Sketch-up-model of Veritas Hardware

I happen to have at hand some pieces of Kapur lumber who suffer from a form of identity crisis; It believed itself to be half Lignum Vitae, half curly Exotica, and quite successfully at that. Insofar as it is possible for a wood to be disillusioned, grain-interlocked, grain sudden-reversed, tough, impossibly unpleasant cutting, warping along the length, cupping across the width, this is what the wood did. Bad-assed timber.

Waste not. I use badie to do a trial fit. A Lego brick exercise with some #6 wood screws.

First, some stock removal for the nut.

The rough assembly helps to approximate the final dimension.

I then F-Clamped a piece of badie to a stool, then ploughed a trench for the Upper guide plate, screwed on the unpainted steel Bench plate.

*(Guide plates, upper and lower, both slides with the vise assembly; Bench-plate; the plate you stick to the bench, for the guide plate to glide on.)

Then I dealt with the sliding module. All screws and no glues here, for any needed adjustment. I am also too cheap to order the vise handle; I happen to have a curtain rod of Maple.

It must have weighed 20 lbs at this point.

Heave-ho, up you go!

At "Full-Open" position. Note the one inch or less of screw thread left for compensating the wooden jaw thickness.

As described by Veritas, vice opening capacity..."8 inches, less the thickness of wooden jaws."




The seldom seen back view.

The back view illustrating the reason for all the ploughing and stock removal. I barely made sense of it.

(Note: The two tie bolts are not assembled for this trial-fit)

Lastly, a textbook example of how to sag a tail vise by sloppy dimensioning:

One last thing: Position the vise slightly proud of the bench top. Also,Align the grain direction of the top cover with the rest of the bench top. You will need to level both together.



I forgot to chill the beer. sigh*