La Forge Royale Miter Jack Hardware Kits

The La Forge Royale miter jack drawing is just about done. I've spent the last couple weeks taking it apart piece by piece and accurately measuring every part, to the nearest 1/64". This vise was very carefully crafted, and even after about 100 years or so (that's a wild guess, but probably fairly close) the things functions sweetly.

We've decided we're going to make a short run of hardware for this vise. If you think you'd like one, post a comment below (please don't email us, use the comment form) It will help us gauge how many to make.

When we get the first batch of bits together, we'll build the first one and document our construction sequence. We won't produce measured 2d drawings for the vise, but simply post the Sketchup drawing when its ready, in a week or two. If you don't know how to pull dimensions and move things around in Sketchup yet, you might want to learn. It's easy. We recommend Bob Lang's Popular Woodworking video course. It's excellent. 

Here's what will be included in the hardware kit:

- Hardwood screw and tapped nut block. The nut block will be milled to final thickness, but oversize in length and width. You'll take it to final size, and cut the joinery. We'll likely use hard maple since its widely available. But we might use beech too, like the original. Thick beech is available, you just have to look harder.

- Brass ferrule and garter, steel garter pin, cross pin. The ferrule, screw tenon and steel garter pin will be pre-drilled to accept the cross pin. We'll provide instruction on how to assemble it, since you'll have to assemble these parts after the entire vise is built. Once the garter is in place, the screw can't be removed from the nut block without driving the pin back out.

- Steel Hook. This is the part that engages the half miter block and allows it to move in tandem with the moving jaw.

- Screws. These will be flat head, slotted, and likely unplated to fit with original.

Our version will be slightly different than the original. Here's how.

- The original jaws are fingerjointed. We didn't include this in the drawing. If you want to fingerjoint them, nothing wrong with that. But it's probably not necessary. I think an excellently prepared and glued lamination will hold up just fine. In fact, both fingerjointed surfaces in the original are loose.

- The screw pitch in the original is 5tpi, 1-1/8" dia. We'll try and duplicate this. But to keep costs reasonable we're going to source stock brass tubing for the ferrule. This may dictate that we alter the size of the screw a bit. It won't matter to you, since all the threading and tapping will be done.