My bench was built about 25 years ago, and I was pretty pleased with it at the time (pic 1 – taken quite a few years down the track!). It included my first attempt at a tail vise, and somewhat to my surprise, it all went together easily, & worked well from the start. However, I made two blunders, one of which was making the spacing of the dog holes in the tail vise the same as those on the bench proper. Now, there is a Murphy’s law that decrees that the moving dog will [:I]never[/I] be in the right position to accept a new board, and it will [:I]always[/I] require the vise to be moved almost a full dog spacing to engage it. So for too many years I put up with winding the screw back & forth an unnecessary number of times – at 4tpi, & 4 inches (100mm) between dogs, that means 14 or 15 turns (pic 2). My other blunder was glueing the top cap on, which made the vise un-demountable, and so I could not easily take it off in the event repairs or modifications were needed.
So this exercise began innocently enough – I decided some of my old wooden dogs were getting a bit tired, and I should make some replacements – no more than an hour’s work. As an aside, I’ve tried a few methods for making dogs stay put. One way is to taper the shaft, from oversize at the top, to a snug fit at the bottom, then saw a wide kerf down the front to make a spring. These worked well for a few years, then the spring got tired, so I pepped them up a bit by driving a countersunk screw into the bottom, to force the spring leaf out a bit. That worked for a time too (another half- turn or so of the screw would tighten it up every now & then). But the best solution so far has been to use ball catches. I was worried that the balls would wear tracks in the dog holes & lose their grip, but they have continued to function for years, with little effect on the dog holes. So I made a pack of new dogs from scraps of wattle & river-oak (pic 3, comparing old & new).

Continued.....

Attached Images

	Bench original red.jpg (61.4 KB, 103 views)
	Original dog spacing.jpg (54.4 KB, 72 views)
	Dogs old & new.jpg (64.5 KB, 87 views)

__________________
IW

Well, the dog-making process went according to plan, but at some stage I had a rush of blood to the head & decided to fix my dog-space challenged vise properly. I considered chopping a couple of new dog holes between the existing ones, but decided that would be too difficult with the vise in place, so I thought I could partly dismantle it & glue in a new dog-hole board. Have you ever started something & wished you’d left well-enough alone? I can tell you, that Lee Valley’s GF2002 glue I used is bl**dy good stuff! Getting it apart turned out to be a pretty destructive process – you can see there was maximum wood failure, & virtually no glue failure – not bad after 25 years (pic 1). The top was also impossible to remove without causing severe damage to it, so a major rebuild was called for. Fortunately, I still had some scraps of the original Walnut & Maple used to build the bench (is that a record for hoarding?), so was able to make a new main section for the vise. This was carefully made with the dovetails just a mm or so larger than the previous set, so I could saw out the old ones leaving clear wood for re-glueing. Making the part & scribing the new dovetails was easy enough (pics 2 & 3), but sawing & chiselling out the old dovetails wasn’t. I didn’t have enough Maple to replace any more bits, so could not pull it completely apart, which made preparing the new dovetail sockets awkward. However, after a lot of careful paring, I managed to get a nice, firm fit, though the visible edges are not quite as water-tight as the originals.
The last fiddly job was to fit a new cap piece & cut the dog holes though to match those in the piece below. This time I screwed the cap on instead of glueing it, so that I can reassemble the vise (& dis-assemble it easily in the future, which I hope won’t be necessary in the rest of my lifetime!). After screwing the cap piece on, the dog-holes were outlined from below with a chisel, and the lines carried around to the top. A good portion of the waste was drilled out, and the holes carefully squared up to match (pic 4).

continued...

Attached Images

	Dog board removed.jpg (60.2 KB, 61 views)
	Scribing d-tails.jpg (87.5 KB, 54 views)
	D-tails scribed.jpg (88.5 KB, 51 views)
	Cutting dogholes thru top.jpg (77.9 KB, 63 views)

__________________
IW

After reassembly, the top cap was planed flush to the bench top (pic 1 – checking progress with a straightedge). A final cleanup & check that the dogs all fit neatly & firmly, & it’s ready for a slosh of Danish and a good waxing when the oil dries off. The dog spacing on the vise is now just under half that of the bench (pic 2). It was more difficult ‘fixing’ the thing than the original build, but after 25 years of constant minor irritation, the design fault has finally been corrected, and I reckon I will be a much happier camper for the next 25…….

Cheers,

Attached Images

	Levelling top.jpg (59.7 KB, 52 views)
	Back together.jpg (57.3 KB, 63 views)

__________________
IW

Good result Ian!!

Much better than having to build a whole bench. I gues there's a lesson here about original construction methods.

Bench builders take note.

You're not wrong Artme I knew within days of finishing it that I'd screwed up. But I thought it was going to be a big job to fix it (& it was, as it turned out), & there were too many other priorities at the time. So I just lived with all those extra turns, & the years just rolle by.

Apart from a warning to others not to make the dog hole spacings the same on the tail vise & bench top, p'raps the real lesson is, don't be lazy like me, fix your mistakes early, or it costs you much more wasted energy over the long haul!

Cheers,

__________________
IW

Nice job Ian

I find my wagon vise needs to wind 100mm at most, which is one quick spin of the wheel, unless I'm inserting something vertically. The Record 52 vise on the other hand, it needs to be constantly wound in or out as I never seem to have it in the right place for the next job

__________________
Workbench Project. Woodworkers Startup Links #1, 2 & 3.
The Renovate Forums

Ta, Groggy. I guess that's a plus for having a handwheel instead of a stick - you can't give my wooden screw a quick spin! However, now that the vise spacings are 50mm, vs the bench's 100m, I rarely need to move the tail vise more than 25mm - just press up the appropriate dogs, a couple of turns, & voila. I now have a dog in every hole, too, which saves time, but I did it mainly to stop crap from falling through, or choking up the empty ones, as it used to do.

I was using the 'new' vise quite a bit over the weekend, and can happily report that it's MUCH more convenient. I was going to add "don't know why it took me so long to get around to modifying it", but I do know - it was a cow of a job & took even longer than I had anticipated....

Cheers,

__________________
IW

Did you consider making a 'T' dog with 50mm legs?

(ducks and runs ... )

__________________
Workbench Project. Woodworkers Startup Links #1, 2 & 3.
The Renovate Forums

No need to duck, Groggy. I thought long and hard about an easy solution. I frequently stuck bits of scrap behind a dog rather than wind the vise in. But these sorts of fixes are only useful as one-offs, and the scrap is liable to twist if not centred. The beauty of a dog that is solidly anchored & can be raised or lowered to any required height in an instant is just too alluring.

So in the end, the only choice turned out to be fixing it "properly".

Cheers,

__________________
IW

Nice work Ian. Glad to hear that the repair wasn't as difficult as you initially thought.

John - it was actually much more involved than I thought when I started the job. Over the years I had forgotten why I had avoided 'fixing' it straight away - it was only when I was into the destructive dismantling & too deeply committed that I realised why I had put it off for so long! The problem was I had to preserve most of the original vise - I had only just enough Maple to replace the dog-slot section, and one piece of Walnut that was (just) large enough to replace the side. For some foolish reason, I was determined to use original materials - 'twould have been easier to just make a new vise out of some nice Tallowood, as I did for my 'portable' bench.

However, after yet another weekend of heavy use, I am extremely pleased that I finally did get around to altering it. The next 25 years will go so much more smoothly, and just in case I ever need to work on it again (which I hope I won't!), well, at least it can be detached from the bench without partially destroying it, now ....

Cheers,

__________________
IW

I remember a wise man with an epic bench build once saying "why do it the easy way when there is a more difficult way to do it!"

If we are thinking of the same chap, he has planned every detail of his bench so thoroughly, he won't need to modify a thing, ever.

His problem is going to be if he ever has to move the darn thing

Cheers,

__________________
IW

Lol