Bench Dog Opinions

[John Stan]

Howdy,
I have been reading all these workbench posts for the past several months. I have also been building my bench for the past several months. It is patterned after the Holzapfel bench in woodworking magazine. With the following exceptions. I am using the Veritas twin screw vise as a face vise and the benchcrafted vise as a wagon vise. The top is 4 inches and almost done. The legs, apron, and stretchers are complete. The remaining section of the top to complete is the front of the top. So before I glue up the boards I want to know if I am going round or square for the front row of dogs. Does anyone have an opinion on round or square for the front row of dogs? Does anyone have an opinon on how far to offset the front row from the edge of the bench?

Thanks,
-John

[John McCall]

There is plenty of info in prior posts on this issue. Chris Schwartz says you should use whichever you prefer. Round is a bit easier both during the building stage and if you want to add holes later, after construction. Homemade dogs work well with square holes, but there are plenty of gadgets available on the internet for round holes. Check out the Lee Valley bench dogs and appliances. You can't really go wrong with either.

[Jim Koepke]

In my opinion, on the easy part first, if you are using a wagon vise, the dog holes should be a centered on the vice as possible. This will help to keep the mechanism of the vise from trying to rack and seize.

As to square or round, that is up to you. As John said, there are a lot of goodies made to work with the round holes. My bench has round holes and they work fine for me. Making a bench, it may be easier to make the square holes than to drill all the round ones.

One thing to consider is the spacing. I am not sure what the ideal spacing of the holes would be, but suspect it is in the area of about half of the vise's travel.

jim

[glenn bradley]

Ford/chevy, Tastes Great/Less Filling, Left Tilt/Right Tilt, Round/Square; its a personal preference. I went with round as I was unsure of how many and what pattern I might like as a baseline. My bench is also laminated MDF and Doug-Fir so it is no masterpiece, just functional. I'll probably wrestle with this again if I build a more traditional bench.

[Alan DuBoff]

Not much to add to the thoughts given, but you might want to test a piece of 4" thick stock with a holdfast, if you plan to use them.

The holdfast works on how it applies tension between the ends of the holes, and as such as the bench starts to get thicker, it is harder to secure the holdfast in the benchtop. However, this has to do with a couple factors which you can control, the size of the holdfast rod, and the size of the hole.

I think it would be possible to adjust either the hole or the holdfast to fit correctly. But I suggest this before you drill the holes, so that you know the holdfast will work correctly in your top.

If you read Woodworking magazine you probably remember Chris mentioning this, as his bench is 4" thick, and a touch over 3" was said to stop gripping. I think it was in Woodworking they did the review on holdfasts. Since Lang did the review, it might have been Chris's blog where he mentioned that...(or editor note in Woodworking).

[Dewey Torres]

John,
If you haven't already, please look through this thread (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=98260) and particular attention to what Marcus Ward (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/member.php?u=6138) does.

Hope this helps!:)

[Eric Brown]

I have found that having a row close to the front edge allows using the dog as a stop for smaller width pieces.
Since I have a Tucker on the front and a twin screw on the end, all my holes match the Tuckers 7 3/4" spacing.
The Veritas hold-downs just barely work with this spacing. In addition to the top, I have a short skirt around my benchtop of about 6". I have a row of holes at the same spacing and height as my Tucker screws allowing me to easily hold long boards. Sometimes I put a board into my twin-screw and use it as a planing stop. All my dogs are round. I think the round ones allow holding irregular shapes easier.

As for holdfasts not working in thicker benches, you can always bore a larger hole up from the bottom so that your bench becomes "thinner" at those points.

Eric

[Tony Zaffuto]

I used round in mine, spaced at (roughly) 6" apart, which is less than the vise opening mounted on the side of the bench. I use Veritas bench dogs, with the plastic "muzzles" also offered by Veritas. Highly recommended! I also made a few of my own dogs--3/4" dowel with a 1" X 3" X 1/4" mounted on top of the dowel. Works nice for planing thin stock and was a copy of a commercially available design from Jorgensen (think theirs is steel).

If you use round holes, chamfer the tops of the holes. Help keeps the bench looking nice by preventing denting/splintering of the dog holes when you use holdfasts.

T.Z.

[Tim Sgrazzutti]

Wrestled with this before building my bench, and decided on square. I only ended up with one hole in the top for an adjustable planing stop though, and it's rectangular.

Seriously though, the reason I'd do square, is that round gadgets work in square holes just fine, but square things don't work in round holes. Go square and you can have both worlds of accessories. The only caveat, is that round stuff in square holes would probably deform the holes if the top is not hardwood.

[John Sanford]

Round for me, because it allows you to orient the dog to be square to work that isn't running square/perpendicular to the fixed hole.

As for spacing, my holes are currently spaced at 6", but on my next bench (currently in slooooow-mo build mode), they will be spaced at 4". I use my Wonder Dogs constantly, and current spacing is inconveniently long.

As for set-back, currently its at 3", next bench will be closer, at 2". If I have a wagon vise (drooling over the Benchcrafted am I :cool:), I will line it up with that, and also have a second row, or skip row, about 6" further in, i.e. at about 8" from the front edge. I simply don't have the skill to keep a workpiece from shifting sideways when planing against a single forward stop.

One more plus to going with round holes. Its unlikely putting more round holes in the bench in the future will bother you, if you find that you need 'em. Contrast that to adding round holes in a square holed bench, or trying to add square holes.