Building Schwarz's 18th c. Roubo With Our Vises?

A few months ago we began getting orders for vises from students enrolled at Kelly Mehler's School of Woodworking. Author Chris Schwarz is teaching a class in May on building his Roubo bench featured in the August 2010 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. The benches will be built with massive timbers, and in order to help make the vise installation quick and efficient, we developed a sequence for installing our tail vise for the students who have just 6 days to build the bench.

The installation differs from the sequence outlined in our installation instructions in that there is no dog hole strip (the bench uses round holes drilled into the finished top) and no front laminate. This sequence can be applied to other top construction methods as well. Instead of building up the top around the vise (typical install), material is removed from the benchtop to receive the vise. Using massive 5x5 timbers the entire installation can virtually take place in the first laminate before assembling the rest of the top.

For those who are planning to build this excellent bench with the Benchcrafted Tail Vise, we're making these materials freely available. We have a Sketchup drawing (with animated scenes) showing the sequence as well as some 2d templates that help explain the install. These templates will be available for free download once our new website is updated (coming soon). In the meantime if you'd like to have them, send an email and you'll get a reply with the materials.

Update: Download the files here:
Sketchup Drawing
Overall View (End Template)