Thread: Home-built vises Part 1

Dammit! Of course, wooden holdfasts! All I need do is raid the firewood pile for the raw material & they should be much kinder to soft surfaces than the metal variety. Why didn't I think of that?! After all, I've been a staunch advocate of all-wooden clamps for 30 years or more.

Thankyou Matt - I will definitely explore & exploit this idea in the coming months....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Dammit! Of course, wooden holdfasts! All I need do is raid the firewood pile for the raw material & they should be much kinder to soft surfaces than the metal variety. Why didn't I think of that?! After all, I've been a staunch advocate of all-wooden clamps for 30 years or more.

Thankyou Matt - I will definitely explore & exploit this idea in the coming months....

Cheers,

Ian

The firewood pile I'm sure will provide some suitable material. Matt deliberately used spotted gum for two reasons. Firstly, because it was the material I had cut for him, butalso because of spotted gum's resilience. The timber requires some spring to hold fast .

Having said that, if it only came from the firewood pile and it breaks it can always be returned to the firewood pile . Timbers that have a resistance to the blocksplitter may be best.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by IanW

Dammit! Of course, wooden holdfasts! All I need do is raid the firewood pile for the raw material & they should be much kinder to soft surfaces than the metal variety. Why didn't I think of that?! After all, I've been a staunch advocate of all-wooden clamps for 30 years or more.

Thankyou Matt - I will definitely explore & exploit this idea in the coming months....

Cheers,

I'm sure between you and Paul the optimum dimensions and angles will be nutted out in no time.

They could be made by the dozen in any variety of shapes in no time with a bandsaw and lathe, but even doing all the work with handsaw, rasp and travisher it wasn't a slow project.

One thing I thought of, that would be easier to do on the lathe, is to make the post flare from 19mm to 23mm or so up at the point where it enters the head to give a bit more strength at the junction.

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

....... Matt deliberately used spotted gum for two reasons. Firstly, because it was the material I had cut for him, butalso because of spotted gum's resilience. The timber requires some spring to hold fast .

Paul, yes, I'm sure Spotted gum is a good choice for its structural properties. I have quite a bit of Wattle from the various species that grow on my place, and most Acacias are quite tough woods, so I'm inclined to give some of that a go, first. One property of Spotty that I don't like is it's propensity to make lethal splinters on the slightest provocation. Wattles is much kinder to hands.

It will be a while before I can give this any serious attention, but I'll keep you up to date on any successes & failures....

Cheers

Originally Posted by IanW

Paul, yes, I'm sure Spotted gum is a good choice for its structural properties. I have quite a bit of Wattle from the various species that grow on my place, and most Acacias are quite tough woods, so I'm inclined to give some of that a go, first. One property of Spotty that I don't like is it's propensity to make lethal splinters on the slightest provocation. Wattles is much kinder to hands.

It will be a while before I can give this any serious attention, but I'll keep you up to date on any successes & failures....

Cheers

Ian

I've noted that. Please let me know how you go as I'm eager to take up on this as you leave off. Basically once you have done all the hard research and suffered the splinter regime .

Regards
Paul

FWW or PWW showed a wooden holdfast ... maybe via Peter Follansbee ... a year ago or so?

Paul

The Holdfast in Your Backyard - Popular Woodworking Magazine

Originally Posted by pmcgee

FWW or PWW showed a wooden holdfast ... maybe via Peter Follansbee ... a year ago or so?

Paul

The Holdfast in Your Backyard - Popular Woodworking Magazine

Paul, I rely on you to find these tidbits and bring them to our notice - what took you so long?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there are so many solutions to problems which have been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years, but I am surprised that I'd not seen this idea used before. My Old Pot knew all sorts of simple bush techniques, but I can't recall ever seeing him use a 'barilette'. So Paul, your assignment for the rest of this week is to go & find out which backyard trees make the best barilettes. When I was a kid, we used to say our local Bottle-brush (Callistemon) made the best catapults (known as a 'ging' in our neck of the woods) because it's tough & springy, and the branches fork at just the right angle.....

I think I suffer from the modern malaise of needlessly complicating everything. About a year ago, I was doing some sliding dovetails on the ends of long shelves & was wishing I had a quick & convenient holding system at the back of my bench to steady the long boards. At the time, I was tossing around ideas of something cam-operated and way more complex than needed, & I finished the job before I settled on any idea that seemed practical. Something like Matt's creation would have been a good answer, but really, all I needed to do was head out to the tree behind the shed with pruning shears....

Cheers,

Ian

The problem may be you should, like the song, go further "North" each year and not to Adelaide . Here are some more pix of Barilettes from Paul's link.

barilette 2.jpgBarilette 1.jpg

FWIW. I had never heard of a barilette either, not that this simple fact places you in exulted company . Interestingly a search on google images brings up a whole host of images, but none of them resemble a holdfast. Trust Paul to find a reference from a 1930 magazine .

Regards
Paul

I definitely couldn't claim I hadn't seen the barilette. A while back another forumite whose post I can't find at the moment showed off their version, one with a double fork from memory.

I'm house sitting though so I couldn't prune quite a big enough branch to make one.

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Trust Paul to find a reference from a 1930 magazine .
Paul

While I *am* a bit behind in my reading ... that article was Oct 2012 ... CS gets the research credit.

Paul

Originally Posted by pmcgee

While I *am* a bit behind in my reading ... that article was Oct 2012 ... CS gets the research credit.

Paul

Agreed, but CS had dug it up from an old Popular Mechanics magazine from 1930

S.E. MacNair, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Popular Mechanics, November 1930, page 858

Hence my fatuous remark .
Regards
Paul

I do like the idea of holdfasts right off the tree. Trouble is I just got a pair of steel ones and have made the 3/4'' holes in my bench. 1 1/2'' holes in the bench top sound a bit large and I have visions of things falling through. The article shows the tree holdfast being used as a vice so I may have a go at "Ye olde Moxon". Its added to the gunna do list.
Regards
John

Originally Posted by orraloon

I do like the idea of holdfasts right off the tree. Trouble is I just got a pair of steel ones and have made the 3/4'' holes in my bench. 1 1/2'' holes in the bench top sound a bit large and I have visions of things falling through. The article shows the tree holdfast being used as a vice so I may have a go at "Ye olde Moxon". Its added to the gunna do list.
Regards
John

John

The holdfast Berlin made has a 3/4'' rod. It is made from spotted gum so significantly stronger than the average piece of dowel bought from a hardware store.

Regards
Paul

Paul,
I may have to try a bit of experimentation to see what works in 3/4'' size. I am thinking anything I would have used in bow making should be suitable and the heavier the better. I had reckoned that the guy who wrote the 1930 article had had some experience using them and had setteled on 1 1/2'' as the better size. Anyhow nothing to loose but some offcuts.
Regards
John