The Benchmaker's Apprentice: Vise Prep & Harware Installation

Now we are getting into the real important stuff, vises! I marked out the through mortise for my parallel guide on Glide Leg Vise.

Then, I just went over to the mortiser and cut it out.

With the mortiser already set up with some guides and tape marks, I simply flipped the piece over and finished the mortise from the other side.


Then I simply marked out a hole for the bench screw to go. If you can see in the top left corner of this photo, I marked out where my tenon on the leg would go before measuring and drilling this hole. You can also see the repercussions of not marking and measuring first from the odd looking top part of the mortise there... some filling had to be done...maybe?

Now I moved on to get ready to install some bench hardware.


Now I take a square and transfer the center of the bolt all the way to the surface of the board.
Marking the hole for the barrel nut can be tricky. If the hole was just a little bit off, the barrel nut hole can be off by a lot.

I line up my ruler and eyed it so that the ruler was as close to parallel as possible. Looking at the light between the ruler and the bolt, I try to move it so the light is distributed perfectly, that tells me that it is perfectly parallel. Then just mark all the way down the ruler.

Then I marked where the end of my bolt would be.


And, finally, the center of the nut.

Now just to drill that hole.

And we have a perfect fit!