Mounting a vise

[Dick Holt]

I am building a workbench featured in Wood magazine. The top is 1 3/4" maple butcher block. They show the vise being fastened with 3/8-16 flat head machine screws completely through the top. The vise is cast iron and quite heavy. I not sure I want the heads of machine screws exposed on top even though they are set below the surface. Is this how vises are mounted or should I just use lag bolts screwed in from under the vise?

Dick

[Tony Shea]

If you were to use carrage bolts screwed in from the bottom you would still end up with nuts reccessed through the top of your bench. Carraige bolts are not meant to screw into wood. Maybe you are refering to lag bolts in which case might be ok. But it will probably require using some blocking under the vise bottom to get the vice jaws close to the same plane as your bench top. But that depends on the height of the vice jaws.

[Gerry Werth]

I have the same type of bench top as you are making, and I mounted my vise with lag bolts as I too did not want bolt heads showing through my top. I did have to use something, I would have to go look, to shim the vise so the jaws were nearly level with the bench top. I think that was about 1/2" thick to get it level.

[Rich Aldrich]

I am in the process of finishing a modified version of the Wood Magazine Nov 2005 workbench. The vise mounts with lag bolts as Gerry and Tony have said. I am now working on the vise.

My top ended up 2 1/16" thick, but I am going to stay with the same 3/4" thick block under the vise, but make the jaws a little taller.

The main difference in my bench is that I decided to install a shoulder vise instead of the front vise. I had to make an extra leg and there was quite a bit of extra work to make and install the shoulder vise.