Wooden handles for antique vise?

[Stephen Cherry]

Hi everybody, I have an antique bench with wooden vises, and one of the handles is gone. It looks like the handle I have on the bench was made by turning the handle with a larger diameter "stop" on one end, and a tenon on the other, then another "stop" was placed on this tenon.

Does this sound right? It seems like I read about a way to put the whole handle into the vise, ends and all, but I can't remember how.

[Jim Matthews]

I'm pretty sure you'll have to glue one end on, after assembly.

Otherwise, the knob will just fit through the screw fixture.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I really like the handle that came with the wooden screw kit I bought from Lake Erie - the handle has screw threads on it, and the end caps screw on.

[Jim Koepke]

It seems like I read about a way to put the whole handle into the vise, ends and all, but I can't remember how.

It would be possible with the same method used to put an arrow through a hole that is too small for the arrow head to pass through.

The end that is a bit bigger than the hole is boiled and then carefully compressed. It will then go through the hole. The end is then put back into the hot water where it expands back to being close to what it looked like when the process was started.

It is a lot easier to just put tenons on both ends of a dowel and then gluing on the knobs.

jtk

[Scott M Perry]

I think, especially with old wooden vises/screws, it would be hard to compress/decompress the handle in situ. I did the tenon-on-either-end thing, and turned the caps from curly claro walnut. A good excuse to use some nice little scraps.

249309

[harry strasil]

I just use a dowel of the proper size and get a couple of round wooden balls and set them up in a vise on my drill press and bore in about 1/2" or so with a forstner bit, then finish drilling the rest of the way thru with a small bit so I can countersink the top of the ball and attach the balls to the dowel handle with a couple of flat head wood screws.