Update: Carver's Vise

We have several new ideas on the drawing board here at Benchcrafted, but the one that has been the focus of our attention lately has been the La Forge Royale Carver's Vise.

We've been working out the details for this vise since last October. We're still a few weeks away from the first production run, but here are a few details we can share.

We'll be offering this vise in various configurations (none of which we can guarantee):

1. Metal components only. You provide the wood and build the vise. So start looking for some nice 12/4 stock now. This would be the perfect project for that odd chunk you've had laying around waiting for the right project. Got any big lignum vitae offcuts?

2. Metal components and enough wood to build one vise. Right now we're looking into sourcing some 12/4 stock for the vise. We have a lead on some beech that would work perfectly.

3. A limited run of complete vises, ready to go out of the box, and sequentially numbered. This won't happen for a while, but if it does, they will be special. We're thinking sinker logs of Honduran Mahogany. Don't hold your breath.

Here are some details on the components. All parts will be made from carbon steel, with an oiled black oxide finish. This is the best way to get the hand-forged look without having to rob a bank. The only off the shelf parts will be the wood screws used to fasten the brackets to the wood, and four square nuts. All other parts we're machining from scratch. We're going to use a mix of quick, rudimentary fabrication methods to suggest the hand forged look, along with CNC to keep the cost down and precision where its needed.

These vises were widely used all over Europe (and especially France) before WWII. And for more than just carving.

Here's three men working with their vises, carving parts for furniture. c. 1931

And here's another gentleman working with his carver's vise. This is at L'Ecole Boulle. c. 1912

For more clever uses of this vise, take a look at these videos, both very interesting.

http://www.ina.fr/economie-et-societe/vie-economique/video/VDD09005638/les-ecoles-nationales-professionnelles.fr.html



http://www.ina.fr/economie-et-societe/education-et-enseignement/video/VDD10045545/la-fabrication-d-un-siege-a-l-ecole-boulle.fr.html

English Dovetails and a New Blog

English craftsman David Barron sent us an email a bit ago announcing his new blog, which you can see here.

David uses a Glide Leg Vise in his joinery bench, and in the video above to demonstrate his method for cutting through dovetails (which is simply fantastic in our opinion, especially for beginners). Our favorite moment is right at the 7:00 mark where he gives the wheel a little flick (chisel in hand no less!) to close the vise.

Make sure you check out the lovely tools David is making, here.

Jefferson Cases-Done

Last night I finished up the final, smallest case to top off my set of Thomas Jefferson book boxes.

This has been the largest single dovetailing project I've ever done. Well over 120 individual joints. All were cut by hand using the Lie-Nielsen thin plate dovetail saw. I'll say one thing. "Cut nail" joinery is looking mighty attractive right now.

Material is steamed beech, with three coats of Minwax Antique Oil. All surfaces are hand planed, followed up with paper to smooth the ends of the pins and tails.

The backs of the cases are 1/2" beech, with a beaded shiplap, just like in the article. I fastened the backs with clout nails. I imagine this case will be around for several hundred years.

I made a few changes to the design on the cases. First, on the base (plinth) I designed a cyma reversa with fillet profile instead of using the profile from Chris' cases. I thought the base needed a little beefing up, and this profile seemed to fit a little better to my eye. Next, I changed the dimensions of the cases slightly. The bottom case is the largest, with the case above a tad shorter. The rest of the cases are all from the plans. Thirdly, I changed the depth of the cases for two reason: to better fit the books I have, and so I could layout the dovetails so the spacing is consistent from case to case. I think this helps to unify the look of the piece, while still keeping the separate "book box" theme.

Here's what I like about this project.

1. The cases are all the same. Same layout, same marking gauge settings. I could get setup to build one, and then finish the rest without mental effort.

2. The 48" wide cases work well for wide uninterrupted spans. And this works because each shelf is in effect 1-1/2" thick, especially when the cases are assembled and screwed together from underneath each "shelf" pair. Couple this with the solid back nailed to the back of each horizontal member and you end up with a very rigid structure.

3. The cases do not dominate the shop. I milled all the wood for the entire project in one shot, then stickered it in the corner of the shop as I built each box one at a time. First I built the plinth and lowest case, finished it, took it in the house, and then moved onto the next box. I never had more than one box taking up shop space at a time.

4. Our Moxon vise was indispensable for this project. There are a few commercial versions of the Moxon vise available on the market now. And I've used a few of them, including a couple shop-made versions. I am absoltely spoiled on the handwheels. Their mass and virtually friction-free movement meant I could focus entirely on precision sawing. Frustrating workholding really disrupts my concentration. The Moxon has been wonderful.

Here are some more pics of the piece, in my office.

For Follansbee

Hey Peter, you want racing stripes? You got 'em!

Oh, (and I promise to never do this again) I shot this a few weeks ago out the kitchen window:

Winter Smoother - Tote Shaping

After returning from Brese Plane a couple weeks ago the Winter Smoother sat on the bookshelf in my office for over a week while I caught up from time away.

Then it happened. Sunday afternoon. The eternal day. That magical time when working in the shop  seems so right. It's unlike any other day.

I slung my camera bag over my shoulder, grabbed the tripod, and headed to the shop, Winter Smoother and tote in hand. I dusted off the bench, hit play on my Zune, and started making rosewood dust...

Bag O' Suede, and Other Updates

After only 2 requests, we are now offering suede scraps. Yeah, we aim to please.

After cutting out nice squares and rectangles of suede for packaging with our vises, we are left with odd-shaped pieces, because cows are funny-shaped.

We stuff scraps into nylon bags until we can stuff no more. Once the bags are full, they are about the size of a Dachshund (minus the legs) , and weigh well over a pound (that's the contents of one bag, pictured above.) There are always some pieces with nice acreage in each bag. Sometimes you'll even get an entire piece from one of our Moxon vises that didn't pass inspection, plus some odd pieces. Those are a deal. Colors are random, but are always drab brown, tan or the like. Earthy, shop-friendly colors. The Bag O' Suede is only $20.

You can line all your vises with suede, the faces of your dogs, the faces of your clamps, the pads on your holdfasts, anything you want to be grippy and padded. You can even cut long thin strips and make leather rope if you like. It's handy stuff to have around the shop.

The other updates are these. We've redesigned our ordering page. So much so that we don't even have an ordering page anymore. It's gone. We've replaced the ordering page with the "Store" page.

At the top of each page on the website is a row of categories. Click on the "Store" tab, right by the Benchcrafted logo. This will take you to the page where you can add any of our products to your shopping cart. In the "Products" box at the left are links to everything we offer. That appears on every page for easy navigation.

The new "Store" page has also been completely redesigned to be clear and concise. Products are now arranged in category boxes so you can quickly find what you're looking for. There's a lot less scrolling too, as the page is shorter.

We have lots of suede in stock, so feel free to test out the new Store Page. Thanks!

Video - Inlay a Royal Dutchman

This past week my computer died. For three days I waited while parts arrived for the new one. Which meant I didn't have easy access to email or the internet.

Every evening after work for those three days I spent in the shop working on furniture projects. It was like the days before the internet when I would spend every night at the bench making stuff. It was great. I miss those simpler days

One of the projects I'm wrapping up is the Jefferson bookcase from Popular Woodworking Magazine. I'm dovetailing the cases from some European steamed beech. Now I know why Schwarz built his in pine. I'm not new to dovetailing hardwoods, but right now I'm pretty sick of it.


The lowest medium size case was glued up earlier this week, and a nasty internal split showed up. I have no idea where it came from. It was simply baffling that I chose that board to be one of the most prominent in the piece. But maybe I figured I'd fill it when I milled the stock. That was a couple months ago.


I'm ready for this project to be done, so I figure, why not have a little fun with it at this point? So I grab my gaylord of inlay (its actually more like a tackle box) and grab a piece that will cover the void. The piece was quite fancy, totally wrong for this simple dovetailed bookcase. It will hide under books.

Here's how I did it:

Holey Cow

Here's a little blog post (tongue-in-cheek warning) about some of the suede we include with vises.

Suede leather was once the protective covering of that double-bacon-cheeseburger you had for lunch last week. Americans eat a lot of hamburger. A lot. That means there's a lot of cow skin out there (that doesn't make it cheap, though, curiously. Not nearly as cheap as say, a  Jr. Whopper–which has about as much protein as a Moxon vise.) And we make that cow skin into lots of useful things. Peel it off and run it through a big sander and you get suede – that wonderfully grippy stuff that we like to line our vises with. But there's a problem with it, especially with the larger pieces that our Moxon vise requires.

And the problem is: cows have holes.

We all know the typical holes. The one where food gets it, and the one where food gets out. The two where the eyes go. Those are big holes, and easy to cut around.

But when we we're ready to eat what's inside the sack-o-suede, then humans start to really mess things up. Like these clowns in the picture above. That's a perfectly good area of unblemished suedeness that this guy is going to put a hole in with his arrow. Thanks for that, Ndugu.

Here's another perfectly awesome expanse of potential Moxon gripiness violated by some kid's practice arrow. Does that say "Hasbro" on it?

Then there are completely natural holes, like the cluster of holes between this cows legs. That's where the YooHoo comes from. Love that stuff. By the way, why doesn't the milk in the utter turn into butter when the cow waddles back to the barn? Weird.

Speaking of weird, here's a gorgeous piece of rich brown suede still attached to the meat, but some brainless human has actually installed an access hole of some sort right in the side of this cow. That must be where you squirt the chocolate syrup.

Once in a while we get some pieces with a little fuzzy edge. Those pieces must have come from this bruiser.


In all seriousness, some of the suede pieces we cut up for Moxon vises have an occasional small hole, usually no larger than a coin. We are not tree-huggers, but to waste a piece that large seems quite wasteful, and expensive. We could cut them up into smaller bits, but with the dies we use, this is not practical. You'll be cutting two holes in the suede anyway for the screws to pass through. So if you get a Moxon with holey suede, glue it to your jaw and get on with making furniture. A little hole ain't going to matter a whip, unless of course you've just finished a triple enchilada burrito chimichanga with habanero chipotle buffalo sauce and you're feeling a bit duodenally challenged.

Video: Tapping Massive Tail Vise Nuts

The first version of the Benchcrafted Tail Vise used a hex nut bolted to steel angle. While this was functionally good, the design was later refined to allow more vise capacity and easier installation.

Thus was born the massive 1" thick nut that we currently use. This nut starts out as a solid chunk of free-machining steel. Each block is sawn to rough length, then the milling begins. Each end of the nut is milled to precise length. Although this serves no functional purpose in the finished vise, it allows accurate positioning for the other operations that the nut must go through. Plus, it makes for a nicely finished part when you take it out of the box. The pilot hole for the acme tap is drilled and then a large chamfer is cut around each side of the pilot hole. Finally, the two holes in the bottom edge are drilled and tapped for the cap screws that hold the sliding plate to the nut.

Then the blanks are tapped with a 1 1/4" x 4tpi left-hand acme tap. And that's where the interesting part happens. Acme tapping removes huge amounts of material, so acme taps are usually two-stage. The first section of the tap is for roughing in the profile, and the teeth reach to near full depth, but they are narrower than the finished thread. A short "no cut" section is followed by the finishing portion of the tap which takes the threads to final dimension. If you've ever tapped steel before you know that it takes some force to turn the tap (even with a small 1/4-20 tap) and there is always the risk of breakage. Taps are easy to break. So when tapping by hand you reverse the tap every turn or so to break the chips.This is impossible when tapping acme thread. The thread needs to be cut in one shot. So to help clear chips the tap is flooded with cutting fluid. If a chip gets jammed, the tap can break. And a couple weeks ago, that happened. We had a tap break even at the slow speeds that we tap at, and the tool launched itself across the shop. Acme taps are huge, and when they break they make a nice sharp end that wants to lodge in soft flesh. Thank God, no one was injured. This part is probably the most "touchy" part of our vises to make. It's always a tense day when Tail Vise nuts gets tapped.

Here's a video of the process.

Winter Smoother - Friday

Friday was a day to get as much done as possible. I had to leave for the airport at 4pm, and I was still running the mill at 3:30. With Ron's help I managed to get the body of the plane entirely assembled by the time I left. The wood components got roughed out, and still need to be finished. Ron had made the lever cap the week before I arrived, and ground the iron as well. He perfectly anticipated what I could accomplish during my time at Brese Plane, including loosing half a day from the first pair of botched sides. Thank you Ron!

I hope to get some free time in the coming weeks to finish shaping the tote and knob, and I plan to take some video of that as well.