In Our Store: Crubber

Crubber is a composite material made by grinding natural cork and natural rubber, then combining the materials under great pressure to form a tough, resilient, grippy matrix that is then sliced into sheets. Crubber has become our favorite non-slip, super-grip material for lining vise jaws. Eventually, all Benchcrafted vises will ship with Crubber. 

What's the advantage over suede or other cow skin-type material? It's mostly on the manufacturing end, which translates into less waste, and that means Crubber is a little less expensive than suede. It also means we're making less stuff that ends up in the landfill. We hate throwing stuff away as much as the next person.

What about grippy-ness? Crubber is excellent. Every bit (and perhaps moreso) as grippy as suede. Since the ratio we use contains a fair amount of rubber, it's also very resilient and durable. Crubber-lined vise jaws should last for years under normal use. 

Attaching Crubber to your vise

You can use any glue you'd like to attach Crubber to your vise. We've tested liquid hide glue, yellow carpenter's glue and contact cement. Contact cement is nice in that it likes to peel or rub off (with a bit of effort) when it's time to replace the Crubber. The other glues will have to be scraped or planed off, or removed with hot water, although they do provide a little more holding power than the cement. Bottom line, they all work fine. Make sure you use plenty of glue, especially at the edges.

Other uses

Crubber can also be used to line the faces of your bench dogs for a non-marring surface, the faces of your clamp heads, the bottoms of shooting boards and bench hooks for a non-slip grip. We've even had customers who use Crubber as a strop. The material loads honing compound well, and has just enough drag and give to make a great strop. We also use loose sheets of Crubber to hold odd shaped pieces in our vise jaws. It also makes an excellent material to line drawer bottoms. 

Crubber is available in two sizes: 

8-1/2" X 11"  $7 ea.
Good for leg vise jaws, or for cutting up and using for smaller surfaces.

6" x 36" $15 ea.  
Large enough for Moxon vises, or twin screw vises.

Crubber is available through our store page. 

In Our Store Now: The Benchcrafted Planing Stop

The Benchcrafted Planing Stop is now available to order. Click below for details.

The Benchcrafted Planing Stop

Aaron Moore's Compact Bench

Aaron Moore of Walke Moore Tools sent us pics of his bench that he built for demoing tools at woodworking shows. It was sized to fit in the back of the Walke Moore Tools show van.

Moore's bench is a good example of a short, simple bench that is quick and easy to build. Only 72" long, with a 2 1/2" thick top, about the only thing we'd change is to add a planing stop. And with our's available in the next day or so, Aaron will have his chance (hint!)

The bench features our Glide M, and a very understated yet classy black milk paint finish on the base and chop. We especially like the patined arris on the chop, with the hard maple showing through. Gives the bench a bit of the vector graphics look (Vectrex anyone?)

Hope you bring the bench to Handworks next year, Aaron.