Marc Miller
01-28-2012, 4:12 PM
Been lurking for a while and am finally ready to post again - love this site! Building my first bench here. After much deliberation (and a whole lot of back and forth researching...:)) I think I'm going to build something close to the Holtzapfell in Christopher Schwarz's Workbench Design Book. This is the one with the twin wooden screw front vise. There are a few things I'm thinking of changing in the design and wanted to ask people here if they think I'm heading down the wrong road or not. I'm very new to woodworking so any feedback is really appreciated.
1) One thing I didn't like about the bench is the way the vise nuts are attached under the bench top. They are basically bolted on underneath with lag bolts which I think doesn't look great from the top since you can see the top of the four bolts sticking through right in front of the vise. More importantly, Schwarz himself comments that mounting the wooden screw nuts this way also puts the screws far enough below the top of the bench/jaws that the vise has a tendency to rack smaller stock. My thought is to address both issues by recessing the screw nuts themselves into the underside of the bench behind the first/face board of the bench top. Kind of like mounting them behind the leg for a leg vise. I'd then recess a 2" or so channel across the underside of the bench for the screw to pass behind the nut. Does this seem reasonable?
2) Related to this is a question about bench thickness. Can you build a bench too thick? In order to recess the nuts (they are 4" high) I'm going to need a pretty thick top. My plan was to use 2x4s of southern yellow pine for the bench top but if I recess the nuts then I'd need at least 2x6s if not more. That would leave (counting the nut itself to the screw hole in the nut) at least a couple of inches of bench even over the screw and then a really thick top everywhere else (except where the screw channel is recessed behind the nut). Again, does this seem reasonable or do you guys see any major pitfalls with this approach?
Any other thoughts you have on this approach are very much appreciated. Thanks in advance for the advice.
Marc
1) One thing I didn't like about the bench is the way the vise nuts are attached under the bench top. They are basically bolted on underneath with lag bolts which I think doesn't look great from the top since you can see the top of the four bolts sticking through right in front of the vise. More importantly, Schwarz himself comments that mounting the wooden screw nuts this way also puts the screws far enough below the top of the bench/jaws that the vise has a tendency to rack smaller stock. My thought is to address both issues by recessing the screw nuts themselves into the underside of the bench behind the first/face board of the bench top. Kind of like mounting them behind the leg for a leg vise. I'd then recess a 2" or so channel across the underside of the bench for the screw to pass behind the nut. Does this seem reasonable?
2) Related to this is a question about bench thickness. Can you build a bench too thick? In order to recess the nuts (they are 4" high) I'm going to need a pretty thick top. My plan was to use 2x4s of southern yellow pine for the bench top but if I recess the nuts then I'd need at least 2x6s if not more. That would leave (counting the nut itself to the screw hole in the nut) at least a couple of inches of bench even over the screw and then a really thick top everywhere else (except where the screw channel is recessed behind the nut). Again, does this seem reasonable or do you guys see any major pitfalls with this approach?
Any other thoughts you have on this approach are very much appreciated. Thanks in advance for the advice.
Marc