Wood facings for new vice

[Dan Mitchell]

Hope this is the correct forum; a vice seems like a "hand tool" ;-)

Just bought a 10.5" woodworking vice, on sale at Woodcraft, my 1st such vice. Is there any particular wood which best is suited for facings on such a vice? How about thickness?

TIA

Dan

[James K Peterson]

I'm using some leftover mahogony, but I'm apply a leather face to it. I was going to just use some SYP, it's softer and shouldn't mar the piece I'm clamping, but I think anything fairly hard would work fine.

I made mine a bit thick (about 2-1/2") to allow for a dog hole to be drilled into the face (instead of using the small dog in the vise). If you use the dog in the vise you won't need it as thick.

Thanks
James

[bob greenshields]

For function on the vice, wood choice is unimportant. I have one cherry and one walnut face on the vices on my oak bench, and they work great - hold well and never damaged a work piece. I may have chosen the same wood as the benchtop, but had a short, fat chunk of cherry and a similar chunk of walnut laying around.....

As the other poster mentions, the face should be thick enough to hold dogs. Mine are 8/4 cutoffs from other projects.

Think about planing an angle on the face to force the face to meet the bench at the top first. The increased pressure at benchtop level will serve you well when working with thin stuff; example - holding a card scraper in the vice.

[Frank Drew]

I'm with James -- gluing a piece of leather to the the wood is a great improvement to jaw faces. I swithched to rough-out leather after having used smoothly finished stuff and I found that the rough-out gave me a bit more grip with less clamping pressure. Either is better than wood alone, IMO.

If you ignore our excellent advice :D, and use just wood, I'd probably choose a softer wood vs. a harder one... e.g. basswood rather than oak.

[Wilbur Pan]

Just bought a 10.5" woodworking vice, on sale at Woodcraft, my 1st such vice. Is there any particular wood which best is suited for facings on such a vice?

Scrap. ;)

[Steve Clardy]

Yep. Scrap

I think there is pine on it now. Been several years since I replaced it

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Is there any particular wood which best is suited for facings on such a vice?

Dry. That's pretty much it.

Some folks like pine cause it's soft Others like leather facing cause they grip.

Thickness? Thick enough not to fall apart under use.

I use whatever I have to hand. It's usually 5/8" ply or 3/4" pine.

[Dan Mitchell]

Thanks for the responses, the vice I got has a "toe-in" provision, where when the top of the jaws meet, there's a gap of a bit less than 1/16" at the bottom. Thought it was a manufacturing defect, until I read it was a feature!

The leather sonds like a great idea, never thought of that. I think I'll start with pine, since I have a ton of it laying around. Maybe then I'll see where I can pick up some cowhide & glue it to some oak.

Thanks again,

Dan