Howdy everyone -
I'm going to be wading into carving and want to build a bench at the proper height. I have plenty of room and have been wanting to build a second, taller joinery bench for a while anyway. I have had a Roubo I built 15 years ago at this point that I've used for everything, with a portable moxon vise to clamp on top.
Height will be about elbow-ish (using Jim Tolpin's guide of of hand spans), and the size will be something like 20" x 42-48". I'll use SYP for the top and legs and use something pretty around the top dovetailed together and for the vise.
I would like to fit the following vises on it: Benchcrafted moxon and Benchcrafted tail vise. I know the moxon is basically a twin screw at this point. But I like the hardware. I'm going to keep it about 16" between the screws since I already have the one I can put on my Roubo that is 25" between.
One thing I'm stuck on is that I would like to make the top nice and thick to have the weight, but trying to figure out how to fit the moxon hardware into that. Basically everything I see has the top thin so that the screws go underneath it, which limits the top thickness to about 2-2.5". As I've looked at carving bench designs they are all thin topped and then there is usually a comment to add a shelf to weigh it down.
Is there any reason it wouldn't work to have a 5" thick top and clear out channels in it for the screws on the moxon? If I plan it right I think I should be able to just build it into the design as I do the laminated glue up so I'm not doing a ton of chopping after the top is done.
Any thoughts on this plan? Anyone else build something along these lines?