Thread: Face vs tail vice?

This thread might help:
https://www.woodworkforums.com/f213/w...please-167909/

For many years I didn't have either and now I have both, ahhh the luuggsssuryy, for hand planing longish pieces the tail vise is the go if you have dog holes down the length of the bench, for cross cutting larger sections with a hand saw a face vice is good, if I had to have only one hard to pick but tail vice




Pete

If i could only have one it would be a face vice. An end vice is a handy thing to have also but really large work like jointing long wide boards can be aquard with a tail vice. The edge will be too high to plane with comfort. Same with large pannels and doors. A tail vice is a nice extra to have but the face vice is the main one. If you are building your first bench and only have one then make it a face vice and you can add a tail vice later on when the budget allows. Leave enough overhang on the top to fit the screw and rods. It is a pain having to modify the frame when fitting a vice.
Regards
John

My answer would be, why would you stop at one when you really want both?

If you are going to the trouble of building a decent bench, you may as well include all the features you feel you need, now, because as sure as eggs, you will wish you had done so before long. If the budget is an issue, compromise with cheaper alternatives, they may not be as pretty or quite as durable as the top brands, but they should give you many years of service. I have a cheap no-name quick-release vice on one of my benches & it has done good work for at least a dozen years so far, and should have twice as much life left, easily.

We all make a different range of 'things' on our benches, so it is unwise to tell anyone you must have this or that. For me, a tail vise is essential, & if I was forced to have only one (though I can't imagine who or what could force that! ), I think it would have to be a tail vise. I spend 80% or more of my bench time using this one. Many of the jobs I do that involve the front vise, I could work around in other ways, but they'd often be awkward work-arounds, so I reckon I would soon be sneaking in some sort of front vise.

Try a thought experiment. Imagine the woodworking operations you are most likely to want to do, & how you would want the work piece held while you do them; that should tell you where a vise will be most useful. Then you can put maximum effort/budget allowance into that one, & skimp a bit on the other.....

Cheers,

Cheers,

I think Ian's nailed it.

My order of priorites would be - bench with lots of dog holes first, face vice next, then end vice. Yours might be different.

My G/G/grandfather brought out and "old oke bensch" from England in 1818 and that bench was used commercially until the late 1970's. It had a face vice - a leg vice - it did not have an end vice, but it did have a couple of rows of dog holes. You can easily chock a big plank, or a small piece of timber, very firmly between two bench dogs using parallel wedges. I hope the enclosed sketchup drawing illustrates it better than my words.



Fair Winds

Graeme

PS: T tried to put in a SketchUp picture but it did not work. Anyone know how to do so??

I guess I am still curious as to exactly when and why you even need a tail vice?

I can attach a large face vice to the far left hand side of my table and hold wood on its along its edge or side. So theoretically could face or edge plane.

So why would you need a tail vice? They both hold the wood in the same orientation ( on its faces or on the edges). You can put dog holes in alignment with either allowing the use of hold fasts and bench dogs to stop the work.

I guess I just cant see any advantage of a tail vise? I know there is one but could someone give some examples?

cheers

Like I said in my earlier post I did without either for a long time so any of my work holding had to be improvised, if you had only one of the two (face/tail) you would most likely improvise a work holding method that will work for the job at hand, but, both do specific things a little better/easier/quicker than the other.

The other day I needed to use a planing jig, it normally lives on a shelf, I dragged it out and put it on the bench and I had an ah hah moment where if I clamp it between a dog and the tail vice it will be held nice and secure, I didn't previously plan to hold this jig in the tail vice when I put the tail vice in the bench, it's more a case of I'll put a tail vice in and I will be able to hold "things" with it that I couldn't before, previously the planing jig just sat on the bench and it sometimes did move a bit.
I could put a cleat on the bottom edge and then hold that in the face vice but then it wouldn't go back in it's shelf or I could modify the shelf, but with the tail vice it will be nicely clamped and secure in seconds.



Pete

Hellofellow, if you don't see the need for a tail vise, then you probably don't need one! Benches are tools, & like any tool, you look for the features you need - I see no point in buying or making things just because someone else says you should.

I'll admit built my first traditional tail vise as a challenge as much as anything. I had just learnt how to make large wooden screws & was looking for an application. However, I felt it would be a better system than the 'travelling dog' (now universally known as a 'wagon vise') on the preceding bench, which had made me aware of the convenience of being able to clamp boards flat on the bench top, where they are well-supported for face planing. With a predilection for using wide boards, and with no access to a wide jointer or planer at the time, I did a lot of face-planing! The tail vise, with several dogs rather than one, seemed to me to offer an advantage when working with pieces of different lengths, saving a lot of winding in & out. (It does!). I also thought having a set of jaws that close at right angles to the bench front would be handy on occasion. In fact, it's handy on many more occasions than I expected, & as I have said, I spend most of my time at the bench using the tail vise. However, that simply reflects the sorts of things I make - maybe I've been led down that track by the tail vise - who knows?

And whether you use a conventional face vise attached to the end or build a traditional tail vise should make little difference. You will have only one position for the moveable dog, but that could be compensated for by using a quick-release vise....

Cheers,

As Ian said the trad tailvise is so versatile the only time I use the face vise is to edge plane.

Blog: The Argument for a Traditional Tail Vise

Depending on the dimensions and location of your bench, a face vise can also be your tail vise. Assuming the bench is free standing so you can work at the end as easily as the front, and you have dog holes across the bench from the face vise, that vise is effectively a tail vise when you're working at the end. This is the style Philip Lowe advocates and was recently a featured project on the FWW site. Basic Workbench Built-In Storage by the Editors of Fine Woodworking - Woodworking - Digital Plans - Taunton Store
http://www.finewoodworking.com/woodw...hat-works.aspx

Originally Posted by hellofellow

I guess I am still curious as to exactly when and why you even need a tail vice?


cheers

For years I fluffed around clamping boards to a table at the front then transferring them to the back when it would not work in the face vice.
I then worked on an antique bench for a number of years with a wooden face and tail vice.
Then I built one with both , a new and solid bench.
There are four benches now with tail vices.

Why ? the need for speed , every time I need and use a tail vice I save a lot of time fluffing around with clamps on a table.
It adds up over a year into thousands of dollars of time.
I work on my bench and when I turn around I have a very solid work table as well , with a top about 40mm thick raised on cleats so there is a gap under the top. The gap is for clamping things down to that top as well.
There are two of these tables in the work shop , so I can space them apart and put the biggest of things down on to both , and there is a pair of block and tackles spaced apart hanging down from the roof as well above them.

A tail vice allows the clamping at the end of a board, Rail, stile, panel , down it's length. You tighten the wood up then tap the dogs down , this pulls the wood down snug to a flat solid bench top where you can work it without it flexing at all , how else can you quickly work, flip and rotate a 9.5 mm thick panel that would go into a small door say 300 x 400 ? or a long one 300 x 1000 ?

Things I do on my tail vice.

Plane drawer sides , bottoms and backs 5mm thick up to 12 mm most of the time.
Drawer fronts , the inside before assembly .
Same as above for Boxes.
Same for door rail and stiles panels
With a finished drawer hold it front down to chisel / rout and fit locks
To work , router or mould edges, the piece can be clamped just over hanging the bench top.
When making boxes for sharpening stones you can router out waste and pound out the corners with a chisel
As a hold down for carving any thing that fits
Holding legs from chair size to table size for working ,planing, chamfering , beveling and carving.
Very handy for cabriole legs , I rotate them on the dogs and shape them with chisels and spoke shaves then scrapers , some times carve them. This can be done in a sash clamp held in a face vice as well.

You can get by with out a tail vice , it probably comes down to what you are planing to make and how much of it you will be making.
They are put on benches for a good reason though, massive time savers for the serious woodworker.

Wooden threaded ones are great, the best I think. two of the ones I have are wooden threaded.
The other two benches have the Carbatec bench threads on the face and tail, I dislike them very much , they are strong enough just way to slow to use, one rotation opens the vice 5 mm the wooden one opens it 12mm I think? could be 10 , much nicer to use.

If I were doing another one, and I wanted a good fast bench made, I would do it with two normal big Dawn vices or similar and convert one to a tail vice.
The quick action lever would be a nice feature .
A freind, Glencross is his user name, did his bench this way . He posted a picture of it to a thread here. look down near the bottom of the thread.
I will have to ask him how it's going after a few years of hard work.

https://www.woodworkforums.com/f213/d...atives-134975/

Here is his picture.

Rob.

Thanks all,

I guess its due to lack of experience that I am still discovering when I need what.

So that being said, many of you say you can only hold a board flat with the table in a tail vise? I can t see why this is?

Also many of you say you can only face plane on a tail vise? Again why is this? For example in the picture above, I see no reason why the face vise could not hold a board flat with the table and face plane?

Im going to make my table with a Carbatec large front vise Carba-Tec® Large Front Vise : CARBA-TEC
on the far left end ( thus to double as a tail vise like many of you suggested)

(P.S- if any of you know how I can get a handle for this vise, let me know )



Thanks all (as pedantic as it is, its great to learn)

I think I may have solved my own problem!

Maybe I was misinterpreting what exactly a tail vise was...

So in the case above, he fitted two face vices (using one as a tail vise).... In this case there would be no real advantage to having a tail vise other than more room to work?

When speaking about difference in face planing etc, are you guys talking about traditional L shaped tail vises/ tail vises that are made for that purpose?

I think I formed a misconception that a face vise on the tail end will still serve a different purpose, as many people who offer plans online use 2x the same face vice, and I just could not see how the tail vise differed at all (other than its position). But am now changing my thinking that tail vises that serve a different purpose are not like the ones above? But rather, built into the table as an L.

I don't know, so much to learn, even about the right vise... nearly as hard at the woodwork itself!!! probably wrong again.. but let me know anyway..

Thanks for your patience everyone.

Oh My Golly , Oh My Golly, Oh My Golly ,

I think a few books are what you need to have a look through.

Rob