Thread: Home-built vises Part 1

As suggested in the thread on commercial vises, a thread dedicated to home-built vises might be helpful to those thinking about rolling theor own. There are many variations on this theme, so I’ll kick off the discussion by describing the home-built vises on my bench. The main reason I made my own front vise was cost. I wanted a large vise, & couldn’t afford the only manufactured vise that filled the bill at the time. So the most obvious advantages in building your own are that you can build what suits your requirements & may save quite a bit to spend on other essentials.

I'll establish a couple of categories to keep it in order, so let's begin with Vises which are integral to the bench:

1) Front vise
The total cost of this vise was under $20. It uses a screw intended for tail-vise construction, which I had picked up at a bargain price, plus some ¾” water pipe and two screw-on pipe flanges. The widely-spaced guide bars were to reduce wracking, and to allow wider boards to be held vertically.

Front vise2 red.jpg

Wracking is further controlled by having a secondary pair of fixed guide- bars under the bench.

Front vise red.jpg

Apart from requiring a few holes to be drilled accurately, it’s a pretty simple build, and the pictures should be self-explanatory. The travelling jaw is drilled for a couple of ¾” dogs. And there are matching dog holes in the bench, making a very useful system for holding wide, short pieces like chair seats, flat on the bench top.

Seat held.jpg

The guide bars prevent wracking sufficiently that long, wide pieces can be held on edge easily in the vise jaws , & supported by the sliding deadman, maintining the dge to be planed at an optimal height.

Support1.jpg

The front jaw consists of two pieces glued together, with the guide-bars held securely inside them by the pipe flanges which have been coach-screwed into one side of the jaw piece. If I were making the vise today, I would simply weld a couple of rectangular pieces to the pipe. This would give me more room for an extra pair of dog holes.
This vise suits me very well – the wide jaws hold well, it has a generous opening capacity (x mm), and the dog system works very well.
A feature I have intended adding for years is a swivelling insert for the front jaw to allow me to hold tapered work securely. I’ll get around to it someday.....

2) The tail vise

Those people who have recently discovered ‘travelling dog’ systems (aka ‘wagon vises’) know how useful it is to be able to clamp boards flat on a bench top. However, a ‘proper’ tail vise adds a whole new dimension to that. This is the vise I use far and away the most. Not only is it good for clamping wide boards for surfacing, it does jobs like holding the twin-screw vise above, and the leather-padded jaws are perfect for all sorts of holding arrangements.

tail vise.jpgPic 4.jpg

At first blush, traditional tail vises appear complicated & hard to build, but they are neither. It is basically just a frame (a very solid one) which slides back & forth supported by a bar under the bench, and sometimes by a tongue that engages a slot in the bench

Tail vise mech.jpg

My first attempt worked well & has remained solid & given no trouble for almost 30 years. I did pull it apart a few years ago, & added a couple more dog-holes, something I should hve done from the start. I’ve made quite a few more tail-vises since that one, & helped others make them, & not seen any failures yet. Just work carefully, & keep it all square, and you will end up with one of the best tools in your shed. Their only drawback as far as I can see is that you need to decide you are having one from the start, because it’s a lot of bother to add one to an existing bench (though it could be done, of course).
I favour wooden screws for tail vises, for two reasons. They cost me practically nothing to make, and the nut can be tapped into the end-cap, which is simple & allows maximum travel of the vise. The tall, conical steel nuts that come with metal bench screws are awkward things, and you either have to chop a great hole in the end cap projection to recess it (which could weaken the member considerably at a crucial point), or mount it sticking out, which cuts a good 50mm plus off potential travel of the vise.

3) Shoulder vises
These also have to be incorporated in the basic bench structure, but are relatively simple structures, & less daunting than a tail vise if it’s your first bench build. You can use a wooden or metal screw.

Picture of Frank Klauzs's shoulder vise:shoulder vise.jpg

The main advantages of shoulder vises are (1) simplicity & low cost, (2) having no guide bars to get in the way when clamping stock vertically, and (3) the travelling jaw is attached to the screw by a ball-joint (you can make a joint that works similarly in wood), which can swivel to hold tapered or irregular objects firmly.
Its disavantages are that the extra projection of vise structure & screw makes it unsuitable for small spaces, and it can be an obstruction if you are working on something relatively small, because you have to reach over the entire vise structure.

End part1