Thread: Veritas Twin-Screw vice jaw materials

Hello all,

Its been a while since I have posted here, and I have been busy beavering away in the workshop with a few interesting projects. I recently received a very thoughtful gift (a Veritas Twin Screw) for my birthday, and I have some leftover stock from the construction of my workbench which I thought would make a suitable front and rear jaw for the vice. The instructions call for the rear jaw to be at least 1 3/4" thick (~45mm) and the stock I have is 165x32 laminated Merbau which I used (3 layers laminated together) to create the legs of the bench. These leftover pieces have a few edge defects in them, so I was planning on ripping them down to around ~150mm/6" wide.

Does anyone have direct experience in using slightly thinner stock like this for this purpose? I know it will affect its overall strength when using the 19mm dog holes drilled into top of the jaw. I could of course use a smaller dia dog in the front jaw when clamping panels, but had not thought too much more on it. Picture below to show what I am on about, the white pieces being the proposed jaws (shown to scale).

Roubo Workbench.jpg

Happy to hear the thoughts of the group! If its agreed that the stock is simply too small and destined to fail, then I will need to source / make a couple of pieces closer to the dimensions suggested, and I am not sure where to source this from (keeping to Merbau or a similarly coloured hardwood).

Cheers,

-Scott