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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2018
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    Brisbane
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    182

    Default Vise advice please....

    Hi Guys,

    I will be building a roubo style bench in the not to distant future. Before I finalize my plans though I really need to decide which vises/vices? to use. I plan on a front vice and an end/tail vice. My considered options so far are....

    Option 1 Veritas twin screw vice as front vice and Veritas quick release front vice as end vice
    Option 2 HNT Gordon front vice and tail vice
    Option 3 Benchcrafted leg vice and either HNT tail vice or Veritas quick release front vice as end vice

    Could you please comment on these options, recommend or discourage based on personal opinions, conversely suggest others which I have not considered?

    Cheers
    Gary

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  3. #2
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Coffs Coast
    Posts
    141

    Default

    I use a HNT Gordon tail vice. Terry’s stuff is beautiful and locally made. I lust after his new vice but my Mike Connor vice will easily see me out.

    Go local!


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  4. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2016
    Location
    Melbourne
    Posts
    169

    Default

    HNT Gordon face and tail vise! Those are what i got on my woodworking workbench.

    I am just starting woodworking and I like locally made tools

  5. #4
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
    Location
    Hobart
    Posts
    5,105

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by elver View Post
    I use a HNT Gordon tail vice. Terry’s stuff is beautiful and locally made. I lust after his new vice but my Mike Connor vice will easily see me out.

    Go local!


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    Thanks Elver

    I did not know the mike Connor vise - here's a reference:
    Workbenches and Accessories


    Cheers

    Graeme

  6. #5
    Join Date
    Nov 2016
    Location
    Bris
    Posts
    840

    Default

    This is such a hard question to answer because it will come down to what you plan to build and how you work. What is best for one person may not necessarily work for you. I am in a similar situation as you in that I'm planning to build my bench soon. My advice would be to think about what type of projects you plan to do in the near future and consider how you plan to hold the pieces so that you can work on the face, the edge and the end of your stock.

    Generally speaking, leg vices are great for working the edges of long pieces and they come into their own for big pieces (e.g. doors). Also, leg vices usually have a deeper throat than most face vices. Wagon vices and tail vices, when in used in conjunction with bench dogs, is great for working on the face sides. Twin screw vices are particularly great for working on the ends of wide boards (think dovetailing of deep drawers or the sides of a cabinet carcass).

    For what its worth, I've decided to go with a BC leg vice (Front LH leg) and a twin screw chain vice on the end (RH side). Bench dogs on the twin screw vice along with a row of bench dog holes on the front and rear of the bench will allow for face holding. I may also use a HNT 150mm tail vice on the LH side that will also utilise the rear row of dog holes.

    Good luck with your bench build and please start a thread about it and post a lot of progress photos.

  7. #6
    Join Date
    Jan 2018
    Location
    Brisbane
    Posts
    182

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by KahoyKutter View Post
    This is such a hard question to answer because it will come down to what you plan to build and how you work. What is best for one person may not necessarily work for you. I am in a similar situation as you in that I'm planning to build my bench soon. My advice would be to think about what type of projects you plan to do in the near future and consider how you plan to hold the pieces so that you can work on the face, the edge and the end of your stock.

    Generally speaking, leg vices are great for working the edges of long pieces and they come into their own for big pieces (e.g. doors). Also, leg vices usually have a deeper throat than most face vices. Wagon vices and tail vices, when in used in conjunction with bench dogs, is great for working on the face sides. Twin screw vices are particularly great for working on the ends of wide boards (think dovetailing of deep drawers or the sides of a cabinet carcass).

    For what its worth, I've decided to go with a BC leg vice (Front LH leg) and a twin screw chain vice on the end (RH side). Bench dogs on the twin screw vice along with a row of bench dog holes on the front and rear of the bench will allow for face holding. I may also use a HNT 150mm tail vice on the LH side that will also utilise the rear row of dog holes.

    Good luck with your bench build and please start a thread about it and post a lot of progress photos.
    Cheers or your input KK, I see you are in Brisbane too! Can I ask where you'll be buying your vices from?...Gary

  8. #7
    Join Date
    Apr 2001
    Location
    Perth
    Posts
    10,810

    Default

    Hi Guys,

    I will be building a roubo style bench in the not to distant future. Before I finalize my plans though I really need to decide which vises/vices? to use. I plan on a front vice and an end/tail vice. My considered options so far are....

    Option 1 Veritas twin screw vice as front vice and Veritas quick release front vice as end vice
    Option 2 HNT Gordon front vice and tail vice
    Option 3 Benchcrafted leg vice and either HNT tail vice or Veritas quick release front vice as end vice

    Could you please comment on these options, recommend or discourage based on personal opinions, conversely suggest others which I have not considered?

    Cheers
    Gary
    Hi Gary

    Form follows function.

    I built my current bench, a Roubo, 7 years ago. I liked the simplicity of this style and, as a predominantly hand tool user, I like the mass for planing and pounding.

    Around that time the Moxon dovetail vise became popular, and this proved to be a game changer. With the Moxon double screw lifting the work piece high for ergonomic sawing, other vises could be chosen for specific purposes rather than general usage.

    A leg vise was chosen because it is the best design (in my opinion) for holding edges of panels or edges of boards against the side of the bench. This allows one to plane edges very efficiently. I built a traditional wood screw vise as the threads in these screws are large, and this enables the chop to be moved in-and-out very rapidly. I later added an AYS chain drive to the leg vise, and this is a great combination. Doing it again, however, I think I would do the BenchCrafted leg vise, just because I love the precision. A wooden screw is romantic but more fiddly in terms of maintenance/repeated tuning. Of course, since then Terry Gordon has released his face vise, and I think it would perform very admirally. I have used one and it is excellent. The decision then comes down to traditional vs contemporary.

    I added a BenchCrafted wagon vise. It was originally my plan to build this type of vise as well, but Chris Vesper (toolmaker extraordinaire) said to me that he had purchased one. I asked him why he did not simply make his own. His reply was that the BC vise is so well built, and the design is more complex than it looks, that there was no way he could replicate it. That convinced me. I love Terry Gordon's work, but his end vise lacked an essential feature for me: the dogs are not integral to the vise. They need to be inserted. The BC end vise has one dog that rises and falls.

    Shortly after it was built:


    The chapters of my build are on this Index page. Just scan down: Shop Made Tools

    Regards from Perth

    Derek
    Visit www.inthewoodshop.com for tutorials on constructing handtools, handtool reviews, and my trials and tribulations with furniture builds.

  9. #8
    Join Date
    Jan 2018
    Location
    Brisbane
    Posts
    182

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by derekcohen View Post
    Hi Gary

    Form follows function.

    I built my current bench, a Roubo, 7 years ago. I liked the simplicity of this style and, as a predominantly hand tool user, I like the mass for planing and pounding.

    Around that time the Moxon dovetail vise became popular, and this proved to be a game changer. With the Moxon double screw lifting the work piece high for ergonomic sawing, other vises could be chosen for specific purposes rather than general usage.

    A leg vise was chosen because it is the best design (in my opinion) for holding edges of panels or edges of boards against the side of the bench. This allows one to plane edges very efficiently. I built a traditional wood screw vise as the threads in these screws are large, and this enables the chop to be moved in-and-out very rapidly. I later added an AYS chain drive to the leg vise, and this is a great combination. Doing it again, however, I think I would do the BenchCrafted leg vise, just because I love the precision. A wooden screw is romantic but more fiddly in terms of maintenance/repeated tuning. Of course, since then Terry Gordon has released his face vise, and I think it would perform very admirally. I have used one and it is excellent. The decision then comes down to traditional vs contemporary.

    I added a BenchCrafted wagon vise. It was originally my plan to build this type of vise as well, but Chris Vesper (toolmaker extraordinaire) said to me that he had purchased one. I asked him why he did not simply make his own. His reply was that the BC vise is so well built, and the design is more complex than it looks, that there was no way he could replicate it. That convinced me. I love Terry Gordon's work, but his end vise lacked an essential feature for me: the dogs are not integral to the vise. They need to be inserted. The BC end vise has one dog that rises and falls.

    Shortly after it was built:


    The chapters of my build are on this Index page. Just scan down: Shop Made Tools

    Regards from Perth

    Derek
    Derek thank you for a very comprehensive response. I will enjoy reading about your build... cheer Gary

  10. #9
    Join Date
    Nov 2016
    Location
    Bris
    Posts
    840

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Regdop View Post
    Cheers or your input KK, I see you are in Brisbane too! Can I ask where you'll be buying your vices from?...Gary

    IIRC, I ordered the BC classic leg vise + Crisscross and the Veritas twin screw chain vise from Highland Woodworking in the US. This was back when the US$ absolutely tanked and was about on par with the AU$ and when there was no GST charged on items below AU$1000. I sold the Veritas TSCV just a few months ago on Gumtree because I've decided to go with the LN version instead, which I will be ordering locally from LN Oz. If you do decide to go with a TSCV, you may want to consider how wide a board you want to be able to fit in between the screws and purchase accordingly. Both the LN and Veritas versions come in different width configurations. The Veritas version you can purchase directly from Carbatec (when they get them back in stock) which I think will be your cheapest TSCV option.

  11. #10
    Join Date
    Aug 2016
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    Brisbane
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    57
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    1,311

    Default

    When I was a kid my Dad's bench had a big heavy leg vice of some extremely hard wood with a big metal rod to turn the screw. But I didn't want to clamp anything too big and the screw was slow work. The screw was a pain.
    So now I only want a quick release vice on the front. However one day I'll probably get over this childhood trauma and change my opinion. There are some nice looking options out there. I think there is no correct answer here.

    Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
    My YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/2_KPRN6I9SE

  12. #11
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Sth Gippsland Vic
    Posts
    4,355

    Default

    When I first read this thread I was almost about to reply stating
    how a good old wooden threaded vice is the best .

    The distance a vice travels with each turn is a pretty important thing .
    Taking forever to get from one opening size to the next is a pain if its slow .
    I googled the three mentioned by the OP before posting and to my surprise some
    of those metal threads looked a lot quicker than what I have in two of my three benches.

    What I would like to see is exactly how far any vice travels with one turn.
    And that's how I would chose a vice if I ever needed to again and was thinking of buying from new.

    Id like a new way of holding wood . A pair of big timber threads in a work table end would be nice
    Rob

  13. #12
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
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    Brisbane (western suburbs)
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    Quote Originally Posted by auscab View Post
    When I first read this thread I was almost about to reply stating
    how a good old wooden threaded vice is the best .....
    You won't get much argument from me on that point, Rob! :U

    Quote Originally Posted by auscab View Post
    .......

    The distance a vice travels with each turn is a pretty important thing .
    Taking forever to get from one opening size to the next is a pain if its slow .
    I googled the three mentioned by the OP before posting and to my surprise some
    of those metal threads looked a lot quicker than what I have in two of my three benches......
    Many metal vise screws are double-lead threads, which effectively doubles the pitch, so the screw travels twice as far per turn.

    I agree that winding bench screws back & forth is a chore best avoided, & coarse-pitched screws help. I didn't appreciate this aspect of wooden bench screws at first, my love affair with wooden screws was initiated by curiosity & just wanting to muck about with wood. One of the benefits of rolling your own bench screws is that you can make them any pitch you like, using the olde-worlde style tapping & threading jigs (described in AWR #92 & #93). It's time-consuming, but not that difficult to do, & requires no special gear other than a small router.

    I'm a huge fan of the traditional tail vise. The travelling dog systems (aka 'wagon vises') are good because they are easy to add to virtually any bench as an after-thought. However, a 'proper' tail vise has the extra punch of providing a set of jaws at right-angles to the front of the bench. I can't tell you how many times that comes in handy, but the dings & accidental gouges on & around my tail vise will tell you at a glance that I spend far more time there than at the front vise.

    When I first made my current bench (a long time ago now) I didn't realise the bleeding obvious, that by spacing the dog holes in the vise at half the interval of the dog hols along the bench halved the amount of winding. A few years ago, I pulled it apart & fixed that defect!

    Quote Originally Posted by auscab View Post
    .......Id like a new way of holding wood . A pair of big timber threads in a work table end would be nice .... Rob
    Like this? Top.jpg

    :U
    Cheers,
    IW

  14. #13
    Join Date
    Jan 2018
    Location
    Brisbane
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    Thanks everyone for your input... I have just purchased a benchcrafted leg vise and a veritas twin screw vise for my end vise.

  15. #14
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    Apr 2006
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    Hobart
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    Quote Originally Posted by Auscab
    When I first read this thread I was almost about to reply stating
    how a good old wooden threaded vice is the best .
    Quote Originally Posted by IanW View Post
    You won't get much argument from me on that point, Rob!

    But, .... bet you cannot agree on which species of timber to use for the screw!



    Cheers

    Graeme

  16. #15
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    Mar 2004
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    Quote Originally Posted by GraemeCook View Post
    But, .... bet you cannot agree on which species of timber to use for the screw!
    ...
    Maybe, if the argument is about "best" vs. "good", Graeme. But often what's best is what's to hand & we've got a lot of hardwoods in this land that will make very serviceable screws.

    Somewhere in the monster bench thread Rob said what species the screws on his bench are, & iirc, they are Jarrah. They've stood the test of time, his bench is no pup! I've never used Jarrah, the screws on the little bench above are Bull oak, which is excellent for the purpose, but it would take another 100 years to determine if it was better than Jarrah......

    Cheers,
    IW

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