After 20 years of working on a bench I made for general purpose and then modified to accommodate wood working, I decided to get a woodworking bench. Nothing high end, because I'm frugal if nothing else.
Any who own the HF woodworking bench will recognize it hidden beneath my mods. I really would have liked a heavy Roubo style bench, but didn't have the money to buy or build, and reason told me I'd probably never need that kind of capacity anyway. I'd looked at other benches with big price tags, and decided I could make do with the HF bench, especially since it was on sale and I had a 20% off coupon. So ~$130 out the door.
But I still had Roubo in the back of my mind, especially those sliding deadman supports (normally used with a leg vice, but I've seen used with a double-screw face vice.) So I designed a Roubo-esque "face" of oak to mount to the front of the HF bench.
I had to lower the drawer assembly ~3in from its factory-set position so the drawers would clear the vices (which puzzles me about why the original HF bench design doesn't accommodate (but see Loring's [LCHIEN] post on HF Kwality Kontrol.) So I planned around the two HF 10in woodworking vices I kept from my old bench, plus an extra inch below the vices for the deadman's groove. I mounted the two vices directly onto the HF bench face, and to bury the metal vice faces, the upper oak rail is mortised (stop-dadoed?) to cover them. As shown below, I have conjoined the two vices with a single cheek to affect the twin-screw, which I plan to make double thickness and afix with rare-earth magnets, so it can be removed easily, since I plan to make individual cheeks to allow the two vices to be used independently.
The top and bottom of the sliding deadman is chamfered (both sides) to a point, and these slide in v-grooves cut into the bottom of the upper rail and top of the lower rail.
Pix follow. Thanks for looking.
Any who own the HF woodworking bench will recognize it hidden beneath my mods. I really would have liked a heavy Roubo style bench, but didn't have the money to buy or build, and reason told me I'd probably never need that kind of capacity anyway. I'd looked at other benches with big price tags, and decided I could make do with the HF bench, especially since it was on sale and I had a 20% off coupon. So ~$130 out the door.
But I still had Roubo in the back of my mind, especially those sliding deadman supports (normally used with a leg vice, but I've seen used with a double-screw face vice.) So I designed a Roubo-esque "face" of oak to mount to the front of the HF bench.
I had to lower the drawer assembly ~3in from its factory-set position so the drawers would clear the vices (which puzzles me about why the original HF bench design doesn't accommodate (but see Loring's [LCHIEN] post on HF Kwality Kontrol.) So I planned around the two HF 10in woodworking vices I kept from my old bench, plus an extra inch below the vices for the deadman's groove. I mounted the two vices directly onto the HF bench face, and to bury the metal vice faces, the upper oak rail is mortised (stop-dadoed?) to cover them. As shown below, I have conjoined the two vices with a single cheek to affect the twin-screw, which I plan to make double thickness and afix with rare-earth magnets, so it can be removed easily, since I plan to make individual cheeks to allow the two vices to be used independently.
The top and bottom of the sliding deadman is chamfered (both sides) to a point, and these slide in v-grooves cut into the bottom of the upper rail and top of the lower rail.
Pix follow. Thanks for looking.
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