Thread: "Bench Bench" in Crow's Ash

My shop time is very limited, which I mention in a post from last week, so this is also lacking in good WIP photos. Apologies.

This year my big thing I want to learn, which was also my New Year's resolution, is carving. I'm talking about the kind of carving used to embellish furniture. I've purchased Mary May's book Carving the Acanthus leaf, which is great, and I managed to pull off the first project in the book:

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The leaf turned out fine, but it absolutely killed my back.

So this prompted the earnest beginning of a project I'd had in mind for a while: A bench bench

I have "borrowed" this term from IanW, who attempted to make one in this thread a while back, but instead made another workbench altogether. A bench-bench is just an elevated working platform that can be secured to the top of an existing work bench. In my case, by clamping it between bench dogs.

I wanted to make the platform and also have a "traveling dog" or "wagon" vise for workholding. This is the mechanism which Terry Gordon uses in his end vise, if anyone has seen that. Basically, the screw is completely fixed in space aside from rotation, and the bench dog slides along the screw as it turns in place. This is desirable in this case because the screw would not protrude out from the bench bench very much, which is ideal for storing it.

I bought the Beall threader before having a significant "Doh!" moment and realizing that this style vise requires a left handed or reverse threaded screw. The nut needs to move away from the point of rotation. This left me with two choices:

1. Have a bass-ackwards screw and just live in a sad, dark world where righty is no more tighty than lefty is loosey
2. Just man up and do the damn thing how it should be done

You know what I chose...

I set about making a left handed tap and die for a 1 1/4 inch bench screw using the information presented by IanW in both this thread and also in Australian Wood Review issues 92 and 93. For anyone with an interest in wooden screws, these resources have all the info you need. Literally. I followed the step by step and had it working in about a day and a half. Here are some photos:

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Just the amount of righty loosey and lefty tighty that I had to deal with to make this tap was enough to drive me crazy and totally reinforce my decision to not make a vise that worked that way.

So with the tap and die ready, it was time to make the bench-bench. I have a large stash of Australian woods which I shipped back with me, and, to date, I had not felt the time was right to use any of my Crow's Ash (Flindersia australis). This is one of my favorite woods and I just find it to be so useful in the right applications, but I eventually talked myself into using it on the bench-bench. In lieu of WIP photos, here is the finished project:

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You'll notice that there is a second vise. This was actually a bit of a last minute call. I had it in the back of my mind that I could put a Moxon style vise on the front, and I'm really glad I did. I have around 660mm between screws, which is just awesome. I used the Beall system for these and it worked great. I like my LH screw better, but you can't deny the simplicity of the Beall threader.

Overall the bench bench is just shy of 900mm long, 400mm deep, and 175mm high, bringing the surface up to about two inches below my elbow, which is exactly where I wanted it. My forearm rests perfectly on it. It's great for carving as well as sawing joinery and the mass of the Crow's Ash makes it completely rock solid and vibration proof.

The screws are Queensland Walnut (Cryptocaria palmerstonii), which I mostly used because I had it. It works great, but I'm convinced that many other things would've worked great as well. I do like the contrasting color though.

So that's it. Big thanks to IanW again for the learning material on threading. That was the difference in this build being what I wanted as opposed to a compromise between what I wanted and what I had available, which I hate to have to make.

And now I have no more excuses for avoiding carving practice!

Cheers,
Luke