Ben Beckham
03-14-2011, 1:32 PM
Question: How tall can the jaws be on the Veritas TS vise be? Is there a point where it's too tall?
Backup:
The first and only bench I've ever had just had to go. I was a sheet of 3/4" OSB screwed to a frame of 2x4s with a machinist/mechanic iron vise on top of it. It was totally falling apart. Looking back, I almost get a bit nostalgic thinking about all the furniture that I've somehow managed to construct with it.
Almost. So I demolished it.
Then I ran into the old problem of needing a bench on which to build a bench. So I decided to build something cheap and good enough for now. The legs are 3 layers of 2x6 SYP, the stretchers are 2x6s sandwiched through the layers in a sort-of-MT joint, and the top is 6 layers of 2' wide by 7' long MDF. There's a whole gallon of glue and a lot of nails hidden in there. It won't win any beauty contests (not by a looooong shot) but its ridiculously heavy with a flat top that is flush to the legs.
So my bench top is 4.5" thick, and after reading the instructions for installing the TS, it looks like I'll have 5.5" of jaw above the screws. I'm concerned about top to bottom racking. Will it be fine this way or should I look at hogging out an inch of the underside with the router first?
Thanks!
Backup:
The first and only bench I've ever had just had to go. I was a sheet of 3/4" OSB screwed to a frame of 2x4s with a machinist/mechanic iron vise on top of it. It was totally falling apart. Looking back, I almost get a bit nostalgic thinking about all the furniture that I've somehow managed to construct with it.
Almost. So I demolished it.
Then I ran into the old problem of needing a bench on which to build a bench. So I decided to build something cheap and good enough for now. The legs are 3 layers of 2x6 SYP, the stretchers are 2x6s sandwiched through the layers in a sort-of-MT joint, and the top is 6 layers of 2' wide by 7' long MDF. There's a whole gallon of glue and a lot of nails hidden in there. It won't win any beauty contests (not by a looooong shot) but its ridiculously heavy with a flat top that is flush to the legs.
So my bench top is 4.5" thick, and after reading the instructions for installing the TS, it looks like I'll have 5.5" of jaw above the screws. I'm concerned about top to bottom racking. Will it be fine this way or should I look at hogging out an inch of the underside with the router first?
Thanks!