6 Attachment(s)
Building a traditional tail vise - part 1
Be prepared - long posts!
I am a strong advocate of the ‘traditional’ style of tail vise, because I think they offer much more than the ‘travelling dog’ system, aka ‘wagon vise’, that has become so popular of late. The latter are far better than nothing, of course, & often much easier to retro-fit to an existing bench, but if you are starting from scratch, I think a tail-vise is worth considering. I was intimidated by the apparent complexity when I fist saw them, but once you get down to the actual making, they are really quite a simple device. The first vise I made worked well, and is still doing yeoman service 30 years later.
This WIP is for a vise I have just finished, and being the 8th example I’ve made, I expected it to be fairly easy. It would have been, except that I chose to make it out of some of the toughest Spotted Gum on the planet, so a lot of time was spent sharpening blades!
A tail vise is really nothing more than a simple frame that rides on a fixed beam under the bench. These are the 4 esential bits of the vise proper: Attachment 316495
The dog-board is glued in after the main structure is assembled. You do need to take care cutting the joints so that it ends up square & without any twist. None of the dimensions are particularly critical, & you can up-scale or down-scale it to fit your own needs. The front piece (the pale bit in the pic) should be the same thickness as the front piece/apron of the bench proper, so that the dogs align. There are a couple of rules of thumb I follow. The first is to have at least twice as much travel in the vise as the distance between dog holes on the bench. The second is to have the dog holes in the vice at a different spacing, preferably half the distance of the bench dog spaces, to minimises the amount of winding back & forth when you are switching between objects of different lengths, as so often happens when making anything with multiple parts. I also keep the screw as close to the dogs as I can, to reduce the tendency to slew the vise when it’s tightened up.
These are the bits for the vise itself, and assembled in a dry-fit. Attachment 316496 Attachment 316497
The dog-board is made as a separate piece . I used a router and a very simple jig to cut the slots, then finished the ‘steps’ with saw & chisel. The guide bars are two degrees off square, which slopes the dogs enough prevent them from popping out under pressure. (The same jig was used for cutting the slots for the bench top, after swinging the guide bars two degrees in the opposite direction).
Attachment 316498
The screw needs a retaining mechanism so that it draws the vise back when unscrewed. I use a ‘garter’ which is a thin piece of tough wood (in this case, Bull-oak) that fits into a shallow recess in the end piece & is in turn covered by a wooden pad screwed to the vise to hold it in place.
This pic should be self-explanatory: Attachment 316499
Glueing up the vise is a tense operation, with much checking to ensure it’s dead flat & square. I used Titebond 3, mostly for its long open time, to give me plenty of time for getting clamps on & making any adjustments, if necessary. Attachment 316500
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