Tail Vise Rebuild

[Richard Hutchings]

After cleaning up my bench and making all new spring loaded dogs, I decided to work on my vises. The tail vise was the worst. When I built it many years ago, I didn't take the time to do the most important part right. In my mind, it's the through bolts that hold the wooden chop to the glides. This time, I made a big deal of it and they are tight. There will be little to no slop when I'm done.

Here's the old construction lumber chop with grooves for the through bolts, boy that was dumb, it racked like crazy and I was always tightening the bolts.
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I have some maple butcher block top that I'm gluing up for the new chop starting with the core of the vise.
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This time I clamped the glides in place to get the holes perfect and transfered these to the opposite side so I could drill from both sides.
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I laid out the big mortise for the 1" nut to ride in. I used a 1" Fostner bit to remove most of the mortise and followed up with some quiet paring of the sides. I wasn't going for perfection, just clearance for the nut and screw.
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That's where I'm at on this. I'm not going to add the L or any other face wood as it doesn't make any sense to me. I want to be able to easily plane this without any cross grain nonsense. I will need some leather for the faces when I'm done. On a high note, my wife said she didn't hear a thing, yay. I found shaving the sides of the mortice to be very easy and quiet. I'll be using this method along with a guide block whenever I need to quietly make mortises. That's it for today.

[Richard Hutchings]

I was installing the back plate to the bench and noticed some flexing of the plate when I tightened the last 2 screws. I could shim it or inlay some fresh wood glued in and leveled. You can probably guess which way I'll go.

Next, I need to bore out this block of wood to accept the 1" Acme screw. I need to allow plenty of space around this so a 1 1/4" bit will be needed. I don't have one so I'm going to Lowes to get one and an extension, this bit needs to go deep.

Then there's this vise handle which is the epitome of laziness. Those knobs, ewww. I have a lathe so I don't have any excuse other than me being lazy. Well, not this time around.

[Richard Hutchings]

Out of curiosity, what hand tool would work to clean up the bottom of this mortis? It's really deep and my Stanley router can't reach the bottom.

[Richard Hutchings]

Ran into a problem. Drilling the 1 1/4" hole for the screw. I bought a cheap Irwin 3 flute auger bit but the snail won't hold in the endgrain. I tried pushing it through with my cordless drill but it didn't have enough power. My thoughts are 1. borrow a more powerful drill. 2. chop it out square from the top of the chop and make a filler piece to fill the void when I'm done. I don't want to throw any more money at it.

[Derek Cohen]

Out of curiosity, what hand tool would work to clean up the bottom of this mortis? It's really deep and my Stanley router can't reach the bottom.

Richard, it is called a Sokozari …

https://i.postimg.cc/1tkBNSQB/Sokozari.jpg

Regards from Perth

Derek

[James Pallas]

Out of curiosity, what hand tool would work to clean up the bottom of this mortis? It's really deep and my Stanley router can't reach the bottom.
Derek’s suggestion is great. Not having that in hand you can take an old beater chisel sharpen it take your burnisher and put a hook on it. It will work like a card scraper in the bottom of your mortise.
Jim

[Richard Hutchings]

This is a much bigger job than I remember. I still have to trim this to the dog line and continue building up from there. Right now this jaw works as I hoped, no racking what so ever. There's been at of take it off and put it back on stufff and it isn't easy to do. This should be the last time I hope.

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[Richard Hutchings]

I may have asked this before but I don't remember. When I see those fancy dovetails on the faces, are those cut all the way or is it just the face board blind dovetailed?

[Richard Hutchings]

Time to add the dog holes.

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[Richard Hutchings]

Starting the dog spacers.476193476194476193476194

[Richard Hutchings]

I was very tempted to wuss out and just drill some round dog holes. I'm so glad I didn't, this was fairly easy to do and I got some crosscut practice in. I'm going to modify these dogs and add the spring board and leather faces. Of course, then I'll have to add leather to all the other dogs. Even though I said I wouldn't, I'm going to add the dovetailed end caps. What a fun project.

[Richard Hutchings]

Another step done. I finally decided to try a large rip cut and it wasn't too bad. Took maybe 10 minutes. I need to find a 5TPI saw for thick stuff, I'm sure I could have done this in 5 minutes.

[Richard Hutchings]

One thing I found out about this butcher block I'm using. It's a pain to plane. I can't get it flat enough for a glue up and had to resort to my drum sander to get it done at the last minute before leaving for work.