# Portable (bench-top) Workbench



## Dr Al (8 Mar 2021)

This project has been on my list for a while now, but I started the main body of work this weekend. The aim is to make a portable (ish) workbench that can be placed on top of my existing bench (or the dining table if necessary!) to give a raised work surface and a couple of different vices that can be used without being constrained to being in one fixed spot on my existing bench.

I've seen a few designs in various places; I might have got carried away with my design and also might have bitten off more than I can chew, but we'll see...







For a sense of scale, the total dimensions of the top surface (including the top of the vice jaws) will be 630 × 380 mm. The vice jaws are 50 mm thick. Including the feet (which stick out for ease of clamping down to another surface), the width is 530 mm. The total height is 166 mm. The dog holes are 20 mm diameter on a 96 mm pitch. The dog holes in the vice jaws will (like the ones on my existing bench) make for easy clamping of thin-ish stuff on the top.

The vice mechanisms will be based on M20 threaded rod; pretty much everything apart from the hand wheels and threaded rod will be made by me from the beech and some bits of brass & steel bar stock. I would have preferred to use M24 threaded rod, but I can get M20 threaded rod locally at a countryside store so I'm going with that for simplicity. I've also got some 30 mm OD, 5 mm wall thickness (and hence 20 mm ID) seamless mild steel tube and that's quite handy for the design given that I'm using 20 mm threaded rod.






I should probably say at this stage that I'm not even going to try to do this as a hand tools project: this is intended to make it easier to do hand tool based woodworking projects, but I'm going to use every tool I've got to make this! I'm also not planning to include any fancy joinery: just whatever will work and be straightforward. It's going to be fairly hefty and several parts will have bits of brass or steel going through them so there's not much chance of things wandering off. I haven't decided how the rails will be attached to the fixed jaws yet (apart from that they'll go into a cut-out), but it'll probably either be just glue or glue & dowels. The top will be screwed in place (probably with slotted holes in the rails and buttons into slots in the feet) so that it can be removed if required.

I'm making this partly as I think it'll be really useful to have around, but also partly because I think I'll enjoy making it. There's lots of different aspects to this project: machine woodworking (lots of that), some hand tool woodworking, a fair amount of metal turning, a bit of metal milling and some TIG welding. I enjoy all of those things, so from my point of view it should be a good project, regardless of the outcome!






The plan is to have two vices (with home-made quick-release mechanisms). The one at the top of the image above is a conventional vice, with a central screw and two slider bars made of 30 mm OD, 20 mm ID steel tube. Being raised above my normal bench will be handy for cross-cutting stock as the hand saw will have somewhere to go at the bottom of the cut. I'm wondering about adding a dowel into the right-hand side of the fixed jaw of the conventional vice (top-left of the image above) so if I'm a bit over eager with the hand saw at the end of the cut it'll hit the dowel rather than the workbench underneath - the dowel would be easily swapped out once it gets beaten up.

The vice at the bottom of the picture is a dual-screw "Moxon-style" vice with slots in the moving jaw to allow angled clamping. Assuming it works, this should allow me to clamp long workpieces vertically in the vice - up to 200 mm wide. It'll also cope with tapered workpieces thanks to the slotted bushes in the moving jaw.

This picture shows what it would look like with the jaws open:






This is a view of it with the top surface hidden: note that I've modelled the vice mechanisms as simple white boxes for now; I might update the model once I've made them and know the actual details a bit more accurately.






Here are a couple of views of the angled vice jaw (at somewhere near the maximum angle that will be possible with the slots as drawn):











The source material is a 4 metre-ish long piece of beech that was about 150 mm × 50 mm or thereabouts in section (I didn't measure it before cutting it up, but some of the shortened lengths ended up 50 mm thick after planing, so it must have been a bit over that to start with). I cut it up into lengths, planed it (router sled for one side, thicknesser for the other) and measured all the bits that were left. I then updated the CAD model to suit!

I'd planned the top surface of the workbench to be 18 mm thick. I planed the four individual pieces to 18 mm thick, then edge jointed them. I didn't get that quite right and ended up taking another 2 mm off the thickness to get them flat and of a consistent thickness, so the top is now 16 mm thick. I think that should be fine though, the unsupported width (between the two side rails) is only 310 mm.


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## Dr Al (8 Mar 2021)

The first job I did on this (back in January) was to make a prototype of the vice mechanism. The mechanism is based on an idea from a youtube video by Neil Paskin. He didn't provide any dimensions or other details, so I had to work it out for myself (he has also made a plywood version and provided drawings for that, but I wanted to make a metal one). I figured it would be worth testing it out as I was sure it would need some tweaks.






The photo above shows the prototype assembled. I learned quite a few things doing this - hopefully the next version won't need those washers spacing out the lock parts! The final version won't be held together by M6 threaded rod either; that was just for testing.

Here's another view with the lock piece removed:






The threaded part of the mechanism is half of an M20 hex nut, with a big block of steel welded to it on each side. The one on the right-hand side of the photo here presses against the plates when tightening (or loosening) and stops the assembly from twisting. It also presses against the round bar you can see in the first photo and limits the clockwise movement of the mechanism (causing the vice to tighten).

The other half of the lock mechanism is made from half of a bit of 30 mm OD, 20 mm ID tube. It's got a hole cut in it for a magnet and two bits of bar welded to it to act as half of a hinge.










These photos show the lock part on its own. The other block welded to the nut (on the right-hand side of the nut on the last picture) serves two purposes. Firstly it provides the other part of the hinge. Secondly, it presses against the round bar when you turn the mechanism anticlockwise - this causes the nut to lift off the threaded rod, leaving only the tube half engaged (and held on with the magnet).

The result is a vice that you turn half-a-turn anticlockwise and it disengages allowing it to slide in and out freely, but you turn it half-a-turn clockwise and it engages and can be tightened.

Based on a few experiments with the prototype, it seems to work really well and I think it's going to be a lot nicer to use than the separate lever used as a quick release on my Record 52A.


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## Dr Al (8 Mar 2021)

I started by cutting the beech into lengths of roughly double-plus-a-bit what was needed for each component. The "double" was because there's two of each component type, the plus a bit was to try to allow for the snipe of my thicknesser. I didn't quite get that right and there's a little evidence of snipe on the ends of the outside face of the moving jaws, but I'll probably just round those ends off and it'll disappear (it's only about 7 mm into the ends of the pieces).

I then used the table saw to cut a rebate into the fixed jaws. I (deliberately) cut it a bit too shallow so that I could tweak it down to size with my shoulder plane. I then proceeded to drop my shoulder plane on the floor at the end of a stroke:






That made one or two rude words come out of my mouth...

Thankfully, I also have a Stanley #78, so I was able to use that to sort the rebate out while I wait for Axminster to tell me whether I can buy spare parts or if I'm in the market for a whole new plane. With hindsight, the #78 was the better tool for the job anyway, so I should have reached for that first!

I then did a quick test fit of the jaws and table top:






Next job was to cut the blind rebate (is that the right word?) for the rail to sit in. I did this by cutting diagonally with a dovetail saw and then sorting the rest out with a chisel:






The legs were roughly shaped with a mixture of tools: 32 mm Forstner bit for the various radii, then hand saws, jigsaw & finally a saw rasp for a bit of finer shaping. I could then put it all sort-of-together to see how it would look (moving jaws removed for easier clamping in this photo):






I knife-marked out the slots (in the feet) for the vice mechanisms in both feet and also marked all the hole locations in pencil. Here's the foot that sits at the end with the conventional vice (I didn't take a photo of the other foot in this state) with the central vice mechanism area marked out:






and here's what the other one looks like after drilling and then removing the wood in the area where the vice mechanisms will sit. Those slots were cut out with a hand saw for the accessible edges and a jigsaw for the inaccessible ones. I then used a chisel to tidy up the sawn edges.






The way I've designed it, it's really important that the spacing of the three main holes is exactly the same on all four jaws (two fixed and two moving) and in some cases the feet as well. They also need to be perpendicular to the faces and a consistent distance from the top surface. The slide rails for the standard vice need to slide smoothly in the bushes (which will be mounted in holes in the fixed jaw and the foot at the standard vice end). They also need to slide over the threaded rod that forms part of the mechanism for the dual-screw vice. Any inaccuracies in the hole locations will mean the vice mechanism binds up.

Fortunately, I have a milling machine with a digital read out...






The angle plate you can see on the right gives a consistent reference so that I don't have to re-zero the X-axis every time I place a new part in the vice. If there's a small offset in that axis it won't affect function: it'll just mean the edges don't quite match up. The jaws were all cut in the same setting, so there shouldn't even be an offset, but it's not the end of the world if there is: the important reference is the milling machine vice's fixed jaw, which references the top surface of each part.

Everything looks like it's in the right place so far...






That pretty much brings us up-to-date so far. More to follow.


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## Terrytpot (8 Mar 2021)

Had a go at the following design as it struck me that he made it look very easy although I wasn't equipped quite right at the timed and the vice mechanism is a bit fiddly to nail on your first attempt but mine works, just not as well as I'd like it to.


lol...should have waited for you to post again as then I needn't have bothered. Elements of yours did look very similar.


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## Dr Al (8 Mar 2021)

Terrytpot said:


> Had a go at the following design as it struck me that he made it look very easy although I wasn't equipped quite right at the timed and the vice mechanism is a bit fiddly to nail on your first attempt but mine works, just not as well as I'd like it to.
> 
> 
> lol...should have waited for you to post again as then I needn't have bothered. Elements of yours did look very similar.




Yes, I think that's the video that I watched that had the vice mechanism and is what I'm basing mine on. The prototype works well.


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## Dr Al (8 Mar 2021)

I made a little bit more progress tonight. I started by drilling out the holes in the foot and fixed jaw for the conventional vice end of the workbench. The fixed jaw was simple: all drilled from one side; three holes drilled through with two opened to a bigger diameter to depth 10 mm. The foot involved a couple of through holes and some other holes for jigsaw access:






After that, I clamped the foot in the bench vice and sawed down to the holes:






I was a bit more confident on the second cut and went closer to the knife line:






I then used the jigsaw to separate the two pieces:






Then (after sharpening the chisels I used yesterday), I tidied it up:






Am I the only one who finds end-grain chisel shavings like this extremely satisfying?






Then a bit of final tidying up of the slot with a saw rasp again (although no-one will ever see these faces) and I called it a day:


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## Dr Al (9 Mar 2021)

Youtube video with more info on the mechanism:


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## msparker (9 Mar 2021)

Looks like a cool design. I made one pretty much off the pask makes video. Unfortunately I did only have hand tools for the build! 

Mine only has the vise on the front and I'm glad as I use the extensions a lot given how small it is! I have however rigged up a janky moxon style vise on occasion on the side for dovetailing larger boards.


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## Dr Al (9 Mar 2021)

msparker said:


> Looks like a cool design. I made one pretty much off the pask makes video. Unfortunately I did only have hand tools for the build!
> 
> Mine only has the vise on the front and I'm glad as I use the extensions a lot given how small it is! I have however rigged up a janky moxon style vise on occasion on the side for dovetailing larger boards.



That looks fantastic. What finish did you apply?


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## msparker (9 Mar 2021)

I just went with an oil as I know it'll take a beating (doesn't looks quite so attractive months later!). I think it was Liberon finishing oil but not certain


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## Dr Al (11 Mar 2021)

Last night I spent some time making a CAD model for the vice mechanism. I'm glad I did as I realised that I hadn't left enough space for the lock piece when it is disengaged. I'd obviously had a brain-dead moment when I was measuring the prototype and only measured it in the locked position. D'Oh!

Anyway, with a lot of playing around and tweaking dimensions, I've got it to the point where I think I can still fit it into the same overall envelope (100 × 80 × 60 mm). I'm going to make the frame out of 80 × 6 mm EN3B mild steel (as it's what I've got), so I didn't want it to be bigger than 80 mm deep. The dimensions of the various lock pieces are sufficiently different that I'm going to make another prototype of the lock piece rather than diving in and making three of them in one go. If it works I can use the new lock piece in one of the final mechanisms; if it doesn't work I won't have wasted as much steel!

The problem with the new design is that the shaft hole had to move up relative to the vice mechanism body, which means the vice mechanism body has to move down relative to the vice jaws. That's not in itself a problem, but it means that there's much less wood underneath the vice mechanism on the foot. At the standard vice end of the workbench, it doesn't matter as that bit of wood isn't doing very much, but at the dual-screw vice end, I was concerned that it might be a bit too thin for the feet to properly support the bench. In reality it might not be a problem as the foot will be glued to the fixed jaw, but to make it a bit stronger on the edges, I decided to add a couple of dowels on either side:






The picture above shows the model of the vice mechanism in the position it will sit when the vice is locked (the view is shown from the outside, with the two jaws of the Moxon vice hidden, so the shaft would be turning clockwise to lock).

The picture below shows what it will look like fully unlocked:






You can see that the overlap between the vice mechanism and the rail is much smaller than it was in the earlier models. I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to cut out a bit of the rail (as in the previous design) or cut out a bit of the vice mechanism.

I'm going to finish drilling all the various holes in the bits of beech before I get started on remaking the lock mechanism (so I don't have to change the milling machine set-up), but I won't enlarge the cut-outs for the mechanism until I've tested the new lock mechanism design. One benefit of the new lock design is that all of the parts of the mechanism (apart from the cut-in-half nut and the cut-in-half tube) can be made out of 10 × 16 mm steel bar; the previous version had three different sizes.

Here are a couple of views of the model of the whole workbench (minus the top) updated to include the vice mechanisms:


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## Dr Al (11 Mar 2021)

I think I've finished all the milling-machine drilling now (and I've given the milling machine a very thorough clean & oil!)

The feet now look like this (top one is the dual-screw end, bottom one is the conventional vice end - and likewise for all the other photos in this post):






I still need to enlarge the cut-outs for the vice mechanism but as mentioned in the previous post that can wait until later.

The inside face of the moving jaws:






The blind holes in the conventional vice jaw are for the slider rails. The small holes at the bottom of the pocket in the dual-screw vice jaw are for dowel pins. They'll make sure the slotted bushes go in with the slot aligned properly. The through holes are currently just 15 mm. Once the (brass) slotted bushes are in place, I'll use a bearing bit in my little router to make the beech hole match the slot in the brass. The bearing on my flush router bit will fit through that hole to get me started.

The outside face of the moving jaws:






The photo above makes the larger hole in the bottom jaw look really distorted, but that's just a photo artifact: it looks round and concentric to me.

The outside face of the fixed jaws:






For reasons I can't quite think of right now, I decided to make the screw bushes have a flange on them. It will probably look a bit better (and be easier to glue in place), but it would have been simpler to stick close to the model and just have tubes as I already have tube that would do the job perfectly! Ah well, a bit more turning is not necessarily a bad thing: it is my favourite type of metalwork after all!

The inside jaws. These now have pilot holes for the vice mechanism to mount to. I'd originally intended these to be spaced out further, but with the way the milling machine was set up, there wasn't enough Y-axis travel to get to where the bottom holes were going to be, so I had to move them closer. When I make the vice mechanisms I could add more holes further out: I could then manually spot and pilot drill them. To be honest, I doubt it'll be necessary though so I probably won't bother.






Next job is to make another prototype vice mechanism I think. Once that's done (and assuming it works) I can finish shaping the feet and get started making the myriad of bushes and suchlike


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## Dr Al (12 Mar 2021)

I work a 4½ day week so after doing a couple of chores I had most of the afternoon to make some more progress. Today was spent mostly on the milling machine. I've been working on the vice mechanisms. I decided to cut all the pieces to (slightly over) length on the bandsaw and then mill stuff to size. When I made the prototype, the only milling I did was the curved face on the bits that are welded to the outside of the half-tube. Everything else was cut with an angle grinder. I figured it would all fit a bit better (with less need for washers!) if I used the mill this time; given I've had to shrink it a bit as described in an earlier post, the tolerances are slightly more critical (although still not very tight at all), so the milling machine helps with that as well.

I'm generally working on the premise that I'll only make one vice mechanism for now (to check it'll work!), but some of the set-ups lend themselves to doing all the parts at the same time, so where that's the case I've done so.

Here are all the parts fresh off the bandsaw: from left to right and top to bottom: the front & back plates of the box, the side plates of the box, the half-tubes on which the threaded rod slides, the half of the hinge that's welded to the nut, the half of the hinge that's welded to the tube, the jam bar that locks the mechanism and the half-nut.






I started by facing the jam bar and nut hinge blocks to length. I didn't bother with the tube hinge blocks at this point as they are more complicated.











The nut hinge blocks (top) are basically finished now. After they've been welded to the nut, I'll drill the hole for the hinge bar, but I don't want to do that yet. The jam bars need a chamfer on the back edge. The chamfer isn't especially critical, so I just marked it up on the end and eyeballed it level in the vice.






et voila (I've only done one of these so far):






Next up was a bit of relief that's needed on the nut. Last time this was done after welding, using an angle grinder. This time I thought I'd just mill it off while the nut is free (again only one done so far). The set-up looked like this (the angle was fairly arbitrary, but the angle gauge will mean I can do the others at the same angle if it works):






... and the result looked like this


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## Dr Al (12 Mar 2021)

The tube hinge blocks take a bit more work than the other parts. First of all I cut the curved face. It made sense to do all six them at the same time. It didn't take me very long to do as a result of the fact that the last thing I'd used my boring head for was the prototype I made over the Christmas break. As a result the head was already set at exactly the right diameter, which made things very straightforward.

First I mounted a block on the end of the vice (with another block at the other end of the vice to stop the jaws from wandering) and used an edge finder to find the centre of the block (in Y). I moved the Y axis to the centre and locked it.






Then fitted the boring bar and made the cut-out in about 5 passes.





















I then machined two of these blocks to length and added a chamfer on one corner. I didn't take any photos of that, so you'll just have to imagine it!


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## Dr Al (12 Mar 2021)

Next up was the half-tube. I mounted this in the milling vice:






and milled a slot in the middle. That took a bit longer than cutting it with an angle grinder, but it's much neater!






Next I mounted it on a single parallel with the parallel going through the new slot, slid the parallel back out and drilled a hole for the magnet:











Here are all the lock mechanism parts together:


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## Dr Al (12 Mar 2021)

Last job for the day was sizing the bits that will make up the vice mechanism body. First of all I used the side of an end mill to square up one end of each part (none of these components need to be especially accurate and this is a quick and easy way to do it):






Then I got a carbide insert face mill (which is wide enough to cut all the bits in one go) and cut the opposite end to length - this ensures the two ends are parallel with one another and that's all that really matters here:






Action shot (one of the less significant advantages of my home-made X-axis power feed!):






For the (longer) front and back pieces of the body, I added some extra clamps while face milling to make sure they didn't wobble around:






That's it for today. Tomorrow I'll drill the holes in the box front and back pieces for one vice mechanism (possibly using a bit of scrap instead of the real bits) and weld the lock mechanism together. If that works it's full steam ahead; if it doesn't work it's back to the drawing board!


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## Dr Al (13 Mar 2021)

I went out to the garage this morning with a plan of doing some welding, but realised the batteries were flat on my welding helmet. I need to pop out to a shop to buy some CR2032s, but in the meantime I thought I'd do some other bits and pieces.

I started by taking the frame parts for the old prototype. I needed the jam bar in a different place, so I decided to drill both the threaded rod hole and the jam bar again (so I could ensure they were in the right place relative to one another). I also wanted to make the threaded rod hole be a tighter fit this time (it'll be a very loose fit in the final parts as the threaded rod will be held in alignment by some bushes in the wooden parts) so I could check everything works properly with the spacing set right.

I started by drilling out the central hole to about 25 mm (I say "about" as these blacksmiths drill bits are anything but accurate!)










I then spot drilled and drilled out the hole for the new jam bar, on the other side to where the old hole was.










Finally, I used a bit of tube to make couple of simple bushes to bring the hole dimension down to 20 mm again (sized to be a tight fit in the hole I drilled earlier):






I could then assemble the frame ready for the mechanism when I get round to welding it.


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## Dr Al (13 Mar 2021)

There's going to be a lot of brass turning involved in this project. I imagine that if I were buying the brass, it would probably be more expensive than the rest of the project put together and I would have looked for an alternative material. However, I got a lot of brass out of a skip a few years ago and I've got enough in stock that this project will hardly dent my free brass collection!

Turning brass on the lathe tends to create clouds of swarf dust that fly all over the garage and cover every visible surface. As I've got a lot of brass turning to do, I decided it was time to grind a new tool (I've done this before on my mini-lathe, but never got round to grinding a larger tool for the larger lathe).

It's basically a left-hand turning tool with a flat top and some relief on the end and on the right-hand side, so quite easy to grind.






After grinding to shape, I honed it on a fine India stone and added a very small flat on the end to give a smoother finish:






I then mounted it upside down in a tool holder, so the cutting tip is on the left like you'd get with a right-hand tool, but at the bottom of the tool:






In use, the lathe runs backwards and the brass swarf that would normally be propelled straight up and all over everything gets fired straight down into the bed of the lathe. Some bits do still go all over the place, but the majority is relatively constrained. I did a quick test cut on some scrap with a bit of paper underneath to catch some of the swarf (I will probably save most of the swarf in case it comes in handy for various things, for example as a bed for heating stuff evenly).






I guess I need to go and brave a shop on Saturday now so I can get some batteries and then see whether I can still weld after a very long hiatus!


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## Dr Al (13 Mar 2021)

I started the welding with the half-tube. I used the hinge block from the nut as a spacer for the two hinge blocks for the tube. I added an old (and rather battered) feeler gauge in the middle as a spacer to be sure that it would all move after welding. I've got loads of bits of feeler gauge as I bought 3 cheap sets (to supplement an existing good one) and cut them up when I had a mini-lathe and no quick-change tool post: they made it slightly easier to set the height of the tool in the tool post. I don't use them for that any more, but they come in handy now and again as a spacer.






I then held the two pieces together in my hand while I tacked the two hinge blocks onto the tube. No filler rod for these tacks as I don't have three hands, but it's only got to hold for long enough that I can put some proper welds on.






Tacked in place...






... and welded - note that I didn't weld on the inside of the hinge blocks to be sure that the weld beads wouldn't get in the way of the hinge operation. Spot the mistake...


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## Dr Al (13 Mar 2021)

Next up was the hinge block on the nut. I wanted this to sit in the right place, so I used a few bits of metal I had lying around to help clamp everything up. I started by sandwiching the hinge block between two longer blocks, with a small piece of 3 mm aluminium to make sure the face of the hinge block is 3 mm back from the front of the clamping blocks:






I then added the nut, flush with the front of the clamping blocks (and hence 3 mm from the face of the hinge block). The nut is slightly narrower than the hinge block, so I used a couple of feeler gauge bits to make sure it was centralised and held in place.






Then I could tack weld the first side:






and the second:






I then removed it from the jig and welded two sides (again leaving the sides that could interfere with the hinge motion):


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## Dr Al (13 Mar 2021)

Next up was the jam bar. This one took a bit of thought!

I started by digging out some bits of steel that were the right size to make sure the nut would sit in the middle of the jam bar. I clamped them in place using a spare half-nut as a spacer:







I could then fit the proper nut and clamp it in the right place:






The rest was easy. I was extra careful with the weld on the outer face as the jam shaft in the body may run near that and I didn't want it to get stuck on a sticky-out bit.






After letting everything cool down, I could put the two pieces together to mark up for the hinge. This is where I realised that I'd put the tube hinge blocks on the wrong way round! Thankfully the hinge hole is intended to be central, so I can just chamfer the other corner.






Before that, I marked up where the hole for the hinge will be:






I then used a spare half-nut and a short length of threaded rod to clamp everything together in the milling vice:






It was then fairly straightforward to spot drill and drill through the 5 mm hole for the hinge bar:


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## Dr Al (13 Mar 2021)

The tube went back into the milling vice and I cut another chamfer:






Finally, the hinge bar could be inserted (it's loose at the moment, but I'll sort that out later) and a magnet pressed into the hole (again loose at the moment, but I'll glue it later). The assembled lock piece:










I'm very happy to say that it works! This is what it looks like locked:






This is what it looks like unlocked:






Here are a couple of videos that hopefully show it working (the first one was taken with my phone held in the bench vice!):


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## Dr Al (13 Mar 2021)

Not much of any interest to report this afternoon. Most of the time was spent finishing all the bits that make up the other two lock pieces for the vice mechanisms: I didn't bother with photos as they look the same as the ones I made for the first lock piece. They're all made now and will be welded together tomorrow all being well.

While I was in batch production mode, I also made the front and back plates for the vice mechanism bodies. I fitted a stop on the vice, fitted the first plate and used an edge finder to zero the DRO. The position of the holes is critical relative to each other, but not that critical relative to the sides, so a stop on the vice is easily good enough for repeatability.






Then for each plate I spotted the holes with a spot drill:






Then drilled out the holes; three of them look like this:






Two of them look like this:






One of them looks like this:






That's it for now. I'll need to clean the mill scale off all the body parts before I weld them, but otherwise it should all come together fairly quickly tomorrow hopefully.

Then I've just got a bucket load of turned parts to make, but that's my favourite type of metalwork, so I'm not complaining!


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## Dr Al (14 Mar 2021)

Most of today was spent welding (and waiting for recently welded parts to cool down!) but I also did a bit of turning. I started by making a couple of simple bushes out of a bit of rusty steel I had in the scrap bin:






These go together with a bit of M8 threaded rod to make some train wheels!






They then go in between the two halves of a vice mechanism body and hold the two big holes in alignment. The jam bar (a bit of 6 mm steel bar) is also inserted to make sure those two holes stay lined up too.










First body welded:






All the parts for all the vice mechanisms are now complete and tested:






The jam bars and hinge bars are still loose at the moment; I need to decide whether to bother cutting them to length (or just leave them overhanging a bit) and then I'll fix them in with Loctite 603 probably.

Here you can see the reason I added extra holes in the outer plate. With hindsight it probably would have been better to make them big enough for a long T20 bit for my impact driver, but I'm sure I'll cope doing it by hand!






Finally, I started the first bit from the very large amount of turning I have to do. I started with the slotted bushes that go in the moving jaw of the dual-screw vice. These are turned as simple cylinders and then I'll stick them on the mill and make the central hole into a slot as well as adding a hole for a pin to keep them aligned in the jaw.

I haven't done much in the way of CAD based design of metal things; I generally just make it up as I go along. These (60 mm diameter) bits looked a lot bigger in the flesh than they did on the screen! I also discovered the disadvantage of getting lots of free brass: this stuff is horrible to turn: it produces lots of stringy bits of swarf, more like aluminium than brass. I guess it might be aluminium bronze (which I've got a little of, also for free) as that turns in a similar way to this; alternatively it might just be a non-free-cutting grade of brass.

Either way I'm hoping that the other big bits of brass (which look a bit different) that I've got are a nicer grade that produces little chips more easily. The 31.25 mm stuff that I got out of the same skip as the 63.5 mm stuff was a nice free-cutting grade. I'm also hoping that this isn't too difficult to mill.


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## Cabinetman (14 Mar 2021)

I wish I could say stop it Al, you’re making me feel deficient having never learned to do metalwork, but all power to your elbow, can’t wait to see it finished, - hope it works! Ian


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## JoshD (14 Mar 2021)

Wow, I'm blown away by this, looks amazing! But one question: did you consider using lead screw with trapezoidal thread (like this) instead of M20? I would have thought that the deeper thread would make your half-nut more secure, but perhaps it would less readily disengage? It would also have given you a choice of pitch. BUt of course if your rule is to only use what you already have then M20 it is ....


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## Dr Al (14 Mar 2021)

Cabinetman said:


> I wish I could say stop it Al, you’re making me feel deficient having never learned to do metalwork, but all power to your elbow, can’t wait to see it finished, - hope it works! Ian



Thanks Ian. I've been doing metalwork for a lot of years now, so that's the bit I find easiest to be honest. It's this wood stuff that takes a bit more thought!



JoshD said:


> Wow, I'm blown away by this, looks amazing! But one question: did you consider using lead screw with trapezoidal thread (like this) instead of M20? I would have thought that the deeper thread would make your half-nut more secure, but perhaps it would less readily disengage? It would also have given you a choice of pitch. BUt of course if your rule is to only use what you already have then M20 it is ....



I did think about it, but there were a few reasons I stuck with M20. Firstly simplicity/cost: I had some M20 threaded rod & some 20 mm ID tube and that seemed ideal. Secondly, I don't think the extra strength is really needed in this application. It's a vice for holding wooden bits, so it's not going to take the punishment that my metalworking vices do (and one of them has triangular-form threads). Assuming I can get 20 mm OD trapezoidal threaded rod & a sensible size nut, it wouldn't be that hard to swap it out if there ever is a problem, but for now I'm betting that it'll be fine.


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## Dr Al (14 Mar 2021)

Dr Al said:


> Thanks Ian. I've been doing metalwork for a lot of years now, so that's the bit I find easiest to be honest. It's this wood stuff that takes a bit more thought!
> 
> 
> 
> I did think about it, but there were a few reasons I stuck with M20. Firstly simplicity/cost: I had some M20 threaded rod & some 20 mm ID tube and that seemed ideal. Secondly, I don't think the extra strength is really needed in this application. It's a vice for holding wooden bits, so it's not going to take the punishment that my metalworking vices do (and one of them has triangular-form threads). Assuming I can get 20 mm OD trapezoidal threaded rod & a sensible size nut, it wouldn't be that hard to swap it out if there ever is a problem, but for now I'm betting that it'll be fine.



Also, trapezoidal lead screws tend to be much coarser pitch than metric threaded rod, so the nut would have to be much longer to get a decent number of "teeth" engaged.


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## Dr Al (15 Mar 2021)

I realised I didn't post a photo of the slot bushes in the state they were in after turning:






I'll start with a small update on the material. With the parts a fairly simple shape (i.e. before the slot was milled in them), I measured the OD, ID and length carefully and put them together on the kitchen scales. A simple calculation gave the density as 7.45 kg/m³. That's much more in the bronze range than the brass one, so I suspect these are some sort of bronze. One reference I used quoted aluminium bronze as 7.7 kg/m³ and generic tin-based "bronze" as 7.4 to 8.9 kg/m³; another quoted generic tin-based bronze the same but aluminium bronze as 7.8 to 8.6 kg/m³. Who knows, but it's certainly not heavy enough to be brass.

To make the slots, I started by mounting a bush in the milling vice. I'd intended to do this with a v-block between the moving jaw and the bush, but none of my v-blocks are big enough, so I just clamped it as if it were a bit of flat bar and hoped for the best! I used a DTI to find the exact centre of the bush:






Then put a big milling cutter in an ER40 collet. This cutter is somewhere in the region of 24 mm, but it's not an exact number: I think it was a 24 mm or 25 mm cutter that had been resharpened a few times when I bought it second hand.






I started opening out the slot by repeatedly moving the table over (in X) by a millimetre and then gradually plunging the cutter down. I did this until I'd reached ±8 mm.






I then moved the cutter over in tiny amounts in the Y direction and took passes all the way around the slot. This was intended to open the slot out and also smooth it up at the same time. Smoothing it up was a bit optimistic: I ended up with lots of chatter at the ends of the slot:






When I did the second bush, I used a slightly different technique - doing more of the plunge cuts and then only using the X feed to clean up the material between the circles made by the plunge cuts. I thought this would leave a much worse finish but it actually looked really good.

After cutting the slot, I spotted and drilled the 5 mm hole that is used with a dowel pin to make sure the slot is horizontal when it's inserted in the moving jaw.






I deburred both bushes and then for the bush that had lots of chatter, I then wrapped a bit of wet & dry paper round a 22 mm bar of steel and cleaned it up a bit:






The other one didn't need any clean up at all. The end result of that was that the slots are slightly different sizes (about 0.1 mm), so I'll probably make the tubes that run inside the bushes to match each individual bush (and make sure I put it all together the right way round!)

The finished bushes - I'm really glad these are complete as I was dreading that milling operation.






They even fit!


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## Dr Al (15 Mar 2021)

Most of the rest of the parts will be made entirely on the lathe. This is all of the turned parts in the project (excluding the aluminium hand wheels, which will also need a bit of tweaking to modify the central hole):






The long ones are the simplest: three bits of threaded rod with a small plain section turned on one end of each and three bits of 30 mm OD, 20 mm ID tube cut to length (and maybe faced on the lathe for neatness). I'll start with the brass bits:






As you can see from the picture, most of these (and one of the steel parts) are variants of the same idea, a simple flanged bush like this:






Most of the other parts are just tubes.

There's lots of variation in all the dimensions, but the process of manufacture is going to be much the same for all of them, so I won't include many photos. I'm going to start with the rail slide bushes for the standard vice (the long ones near the bottom-right of the pictures above). Of all the parts in the design, these are probably the most critical: if they're too loose, the vice will "rack" badly when tightening or in the extreme it could jam as the jaws are pulled in out of parallel. If they're too tight, the vice won't move at all. As soon as these are made, I'll put them in the fixed jaw and attach the rails to the moving jaw and see how it all feels.

After filling one of my bins brim full with nasty bronze swarf, I fitted one of the other bars of skip "brass" in the lathe and did a quick test cut:






Much better! That should be much more pleasant to turn when I get started on the rail bushes.

I also received the hand wheels in the post today. They'll need a bit of machining to open up the internal hole, but otherwise I'll pretty much use them as is (still debating whether to paint them black - I hate painting!). When I ordered them I was debating whether to go with aluminium or cast iron and went with aluminium for cost reasons. Having seen how much all the bits I've made weigh, I think the choice of aluminium may have been a very good one - I just entered some approximate density figures for all the parts in the CAD model and it estimated 28 kg for the finished bench!


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## Dr Al (18 Mar 2021)

I've had a couple of evenings where I had to do things that weren't in the workshop (boo, hiss!), but was back out and turning brass again this evening. As I said in an earlier post, a lot of the parts are going to look very similar in terms of the process, so I probably won't post many pictures, but I thought I'd do a detailed write-up of the first one.

Sorry if this is a bit dull: a lot of the pictures look fairly similar!

I'm starting with the vice rail bushes. The steel tube that I'm using as the rails need to be a smooth and easy sliding fit in the hole through the middle of the bush, so I took my time on this one. After making these bushes I'll probably be able to make the other parts a lot quicker.

The end face was relatively flat already, so I didn't bother facing before starting the process. I went straight for a centre drill:






Then drilled out 12 mm:






Followed by 19.5 mm (just because it's a size of Morse taper drill bit I have for some reason):






... and finally 25 mm, which is my biggest drill bit:






I then set up a large boring bar such it stuck out from the tool holder slightly more than the target depth of the hole:






Then used the power feed to enlarge the hole to the desired depth.






As I got closer to the finished dimension, I used a (cheap and very nasty) bore gauge to measure the inside diameter.






I measured with some digital calipers as at this point accuracy isn't that important. This was the last measurement I made, substantially smaller than the 30 mm target.






I stopped boring at this point (with the hole under-size).


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## Dr Al (18 Mar 2021)

I then put my upside-down tool in the tool post, set the lathe to run backwards and faced off the end:






I then turned the outside diameter down to about 0.5 mm over the target diameter (40 mm).






Once that was done, I wandered off and did some tidying at the other end of the workshop for half an hour while the workpiece cooled down. It's probably not **that** critical for this application (it's not exactly a bearing fit or anything), but I wanted to give myself the best chance.

Once it was back down to room temperature (which didn't take that long as it hadn't actually got that hot), I took a final pass on the outside diameter and then faced the inside surface of the flange:






This seemed a good time for a test fit of the outside diameter in the fixed jaw:






The boring bar then went back onto the tool post and I took a lot of passes (with repeated "spring" passes at each setting of the cross-slide) to gradually sneak up on the final diameter.






As I got close, I used the steel tube as a reference, rather than relying on the bore gauge to measure the size.






Finally, I chamfered the end to tidy it up a bit. I also chamfered the inside edge, but I just did that with a hand held deburring tool while spinning the chuck with my other hand.


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## Dr Al (18 Mar 2021)

Anyone still reading this?!?! 

The part then came off the lathe and I scribbled over it in pen and marked the intended length of the flange. I then clamped it in the bandsaw vice and sawed off the excess:






Then it was back in the chuck for facing and turning the outside diameter of the flange down to 50 mm.






Finally I used my very small chamfering tool to chamfer both outside corners of the flange and again used a hand-held deburring tool to chamfer the corner of the bore.






Et voila!






Test fit in the fixed jaw with the tube inserted.






My next job is to make another one exactly the same. After that I've got a few more parts to make, but none of them are anywhere near as critical. There are a couple with critical bores, but the actual dimension isn't important, just the fact that they're parallel. I'll (later) make the steel bits that slide in the bore and I'll size them to suit the sizes of the bores in the brass parts - it's much easier to measure the OD repeatedly during turning, so I'd rather do it that way round given the choice.


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## Dr Al (19 Mar 2021)

I spent this afternoon turning lots and lots of brass. I started by putting the vice rail bush in the photocopier:






With both of them complete I could do a quick test fit of the standard vice parts to make sure it slides okay. It's difficult to tell at the moment (without the screw present), but it certainly moves, so that's a good start!






I then got going on the other (simpler) flanged bushes. These were made in a similar way to the vice rail bushes with a few minor differences:


 Accuracy was far less important, so I bored the hole out in one go (rather than letting it cool down part way through).
 The parts are much shorter, so I turned the larger diameter at the same time as the smaller diameter.
 I parted the pieces off in the lathe rather than using the bandsaw. I still flipped them round and faced the parted-off end, but doing it this way was a bit quicker and didn't involve worrying about how to hold relatively short, stepped pieces in the bandsaw:






The first one I made was the bearing for the thread in the standard vice. This one will have a (similar looking) steel part running inside it to give a (hopefully) smooth action to the screw and also to make sure the jaw moves in and out with the movement of the screw:






There were then three identical flanged bushes in which the threaded rod will slide. The bore of these is 19.8 mm as the threaded rod I've got seems to be 19.7 mm diameter.






Slightly irritatingly, I dropped one of the flanges on the floor and it got a "dink" in one end. I've decided not to worry about it as this dink is in the end that's hidden between the inside face of the fixed jaw and the steel body of the vice mechanism. No-one will ever see it.


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## Dr Al (19 Mar 2021)

Here are all of the brass parts fitted (but not adhered) into their holes:






This test did highlight some issues unfortunately. For two of the parts (one of the thread bushes for the dual-screw vice and the central bearing for the standard vice), the larger hole in which the flange sits isn't concentric with the central bore. It's not actually that important as it's the central bore that has to be (and is) in the right place to ensure it works properly, it just means that there's a small (0.5 mm maybe?) gap visible on one side of the bush.






This is one of those things that no-one other than me will ever notice (especially once the hand wheel and washer are there), but I'm trying to work out how much it's going to annoy me and whether to do anything about it (and if so, what). The only thought I've had at the moment is to mount the parts back in the mill vice, use a DTI on the inner bore of the brass bush to get the XY table in exactly the right place and then make the hole a bit bigger (somehow - I suspect my boring head would leave an awfully ragged edge). I could then add a contrasting wood (if it's thin and I can figure out how to make it) or aluminium ring around the brass part to make it look deliberate!

I'll ponder on that one; I think it will be a heck of a lot of work...

With all the brass parts made, I did a test assembly of the bench to see what it's looking like.






I also gave the lathe a bit of a clear up and put all the swarf in some freezer bags for saving. I think I've produced more brass swarf in the last two days than I have in the rest of my metalworking life put together.






That lot weighs just over 7.9 kg! 

With all the turned brass bits complete, the next job is probably to work on the steel pieces:






Three of these (the darker coloured two tubes on the left and the lighter coloured flanged tube on the right) have threaded holes through, one has some counterbored holes drilled in an awkward location (because this part was an afterthought!), one is a simple washer and four are an attempt at a couple of pseudo-spherical-washers to allow angular clamping. I'll leave those latter parts to last as (if they don't work) they can be replaced with plain washers as I don't expect to do much angular clamping.


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## Dr Al (20 Mar 2021)

I woke up this morning firmly of the opinion that the non-concentricity of the hole on the moving jaw of the standard vice was something I can't live with. The one on the fixed jaw of the dual-screw vice I think I can - it's only really visible if you look really closely, unlike the one on the moving jaw which is a much bigger gap and looks (in my opinion) awful.

To that end, I started this morning by getting a big of steel the same size as the inner bore of the brass insert and drilling and tapping it for an M5 screw.






I then fitted an M5 cap screw into one of the threaded holes on my router that is designed for holding guide bushes in place:






I could then screw the block of steel into place.






Sliding the brass "bearing housing" onto the bush allowed me to pick a router bit that wouldn't quite touch the brass.






I could then drop the whole lot onto the moving jaw to rout a circle:






That left a small ridge all the way around the inside of the hole.






Which I took off with a chisel.


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## Dr Al (20 Mar 2021)

Last year for my other half's birthday, I made her some brass pattern weights and a stand for them to sit on. When I was making the stand I had a test run for the base and wasn't very happy with it, so it got tossed into the "might-be-useful-at-some-point" drawer. Today it was useful!

I fitted the four jaw chuck to the lathe, covered the ways with a big rag and fitted the offcut of American Black Walnut.






I used the same bargain-basement Forstner bit that I'd used for the original hole to make a central hole that should fit the brass bearing housing thing.






I then faced the block off and turned a portion to size. Facing left a pretty awful finish, but then I was using a tool ground for aluminium, not walnut!






With the block removed from the lathe, I gave it a bit of a rub with some sandpaper.






I then used a saw to separate the ring from the rest of the block.






That could then be glued into place, sanded side down.






Once the glue was dry, I used my flush trim saw to trim it down to length. The masking tape was intended to lift the saw up a bit and make sure it was still proud after trimming:






That didn't work especially well and I managed to undercut the walnut a bit, so I used a #5 plane and planed the whole surface of the moving jaw down until everything was flush:






Here it is with the brass bearing block in place. I'm much happier with how this looks. It'll probably look even better if I oil the moving jaw.






The brass is now slightly proud of the surface of the wood, but I quite like how that looks and, being on the outside of the jaw, it won't affect function.


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## Dr Al (20 Mar 2021)

With the concentricity problem fixed, I could get on with some of the steel parts. I started by putting a bit of 50 mm EN1A into the three jaw chuck and pulling out my infrequently used fixed steady. The stock is too big to go through the bore of the chuck and it would be quite wasteful to cut a length off as I'd need an extra bit to be held in the chuck and that extra bit might end up being too short to be useful.






With that all set up (and well lubricated), I spot drilled the centre point, then drilled it out 6 mm, 12 mm and 16 mm to a depth of about 70 mm.






I then bored the hole to 17.75 mm, which is tapping size for 70% thread engagement on a M20×2.5 threaded hole.






I then set the lathe up for thread cutting and used the only tool I could find in my collection that would cut an internal thread with such a coarse pitch. Unfortunately, it's a right-hand threading tool so I had to cut the thread in this blind hole with the lathe running forwards and the tool the normal way up. I generally prefer to cut threads with the lathe running backwards as the tool exits the hole at the end of the cut rather than (potentially) running into the bottom of the hole.






I didn't enjoy that much (I much prefer finer pitch threads!) and it's making me rethink the equivalent parts for the dual-screw vice. I may either decide to do them as simple plain sleeves and epoxy them in place or I might buy a tap to make life a bit easier.

Anyway, with that done, I faced the end and turned a short section on the end (to get rid of the rusty surface on the end of the bar):






I then parted off...






... pausing part way through the parting operation to chamfer the edges:






The parted off face needs a bit of work (my parting results are a bit hit-and-miss), but that'll do for now...


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## Dr Al (20 Mar 2021)

I then slid the travelling steady along a bit and turned the body of the threaded sleeve down to 25.5 mm.






Then it was time for lunch while it all cooled down. My first postprandial task was then to take the final cuts to bring the shaft down to be a smooth running fit in the bearing housing thing.






A quick chamfer of the exposed corners...






... and it was ready for a test fit of the sleeve.






The test fit showed that it was about 0.5 mm longer than the bearing housing. It needs to be longer so that it doesn't jam up when everything's tightened up, but that was a bit too loose so I faced the end a little and brought the difference down to about 0.15 mm.

I then inserted a short length of threaded rod into the hole:






I could then mount the parted off washer onto the end and sort out the rough face.






To finish off the lathe work on these parts, I put my home-made ER40 collet chuck in the headstock and faced the outside edge to the right length and chamfered.


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## Dr Al (20 Mar 2021)

The threaded sleeve was then mounted in a collet block on the milling machine and two holes were spotted and drilled. These will be used with an angle-grinder style pin spanner to tighten the sleeve onto the threaded rod.






Similarly, I mounted the washer in the mill vice and milled a couple of flats:






These are all the parts that make up the bearing for the standard vice:






Here they are mounted onto a bit of threaded rod to show how they fit together - in this set-up, the brass part can spin freely.






This is what they look like in the moving jaw - the brass part will be glued into the moving jaw but the other parts will be free to rotate.






Here you can see the pin spanner holes in the threaded sleeve and where they'll sit on the inside face of the moving jaw. The face of the threaded sleeve is slightly below the surface of the beech.


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## Dr Al (20 Mar 2021)

Last job of the day was to start work on one of the hand-wheels. After playing around with a few different approaches, I concluded that the best way to mount the hand-wheel on the lathe was with the jaws pressing against the inside of the outer rim.







The pilot hole wasn't concentric with the outer rim (I guess it was drilled relative to the inner hub), so to save my drill bits from having a hard life, I ran an end mill through to true the hole up:






I then drilled the hole out to 12 mm, bored it out to 15.7 mm and put a reamer through it to bring it to 16 mm. The choice of 16 mm was simply because I have a 16 mm reamer and I figured that would give a smooth finish for attaching it to the threaded rod.






I mounted a length of threaded rod in my collet chuck, faced it and turned a portion down to 16 mm.






I could then check that the hand-wheel fitted well:






I then transferred the set-up over to the collet block on the milling vice and tried to figure out how to drill a cross-pin hole! I glued the hand-wheel in place with some Loctite 603 and used a ER16 collet chuck to hold a 3 mm spotting drill and then 3 mm drill bit. I think the roll-pin I was using was supposed to be used with a 3.2 mm drill bit, but I don't have a 4 mm ER16 collet, so 3 mm was the only option. All of my other chucks would have hit the hand-wheel outer rim.






Thankfully I didn't have to open up the hole to 3.2 mm manually: the cross pin went in fairly easily:






With that complete, it felt like it was time for a trial assembly again:






I think the first job for tomorrow will be a bit of a tidy-up: I've made a bit of a mess everywhere!


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## Dr Al (21 Mar 2021)

I started this morning with a bit of a tidy-up and then sorted out the other two hand-wheels. I didn't bother taking photos of that process as it was exactly the same as the first hand-wheel.

I then fitted a cut-off bit of 50 mm EN1A into the chuck:






I faced the end, chamfered the corners and then spotted the centre hole.






Then it was up through the drill bits as usual, stopping at 25 mm.






I then bored it out to be 30 mm, to fit the bits of tube I'm using in this project.






I moved the tool-post round to an angle and chamfered the ID under power for this one rather than using a deburring tool by hand. No particular reason.






I then flipped the block over, faced it to length and chamfered the OD and ID on the other end as well.


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## Dr Al (21 Mar 2021)

I then put the block in the milling vice and spot drilled four hole locations.






I then drilled the holes out 5.5 mm and counterbored 8.5 mm.






Here's the finished block. You'll notice that the counterbores are open into the central hole.






My original plan had been to mount four cap screws on the face of the central vice mechanism body (the one for the standard vice). Those cap screws were positioned such that the heads of the cap screws would retain the central tube and stop it from moving up and down. It then occurred to me that if I made it a more rigid connection, the tube that covers the central screw could act as a sort of "stretcher" to increase the rigidity of the structure (the two ends were originally designed to only be connected together by the rails at the top).

This block will be attached to the central tube, probably just with my favourite metal glue, Loctite 603, and will then screw into the vice mechanism joining the two ends together. I could add a cross screw to supplement the glue, but for now I'm going to assume it isn't necessary.


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## Dr Al (21 Mar 2021)

Next up was the tubes to run in the slotted bushes for the dual-screw vice. The original plan was to have these threaded onto the shafts, but I couldn't face another bit of 2.5 mm pitch thread cutting, so I just took a bit of the tube and skimmed the OD down to 25 mm to fit in the slotted bushes.






I then cut it off with the bandsaw, flipped it over, faced and chamfered and Robert's your father's brother:






My original plan with the holes in the wood for the slotted bushes was to rout them out once the brass bits were glued in place. However, I got impatient and wanted to do some trial fits before things got as permanent as being glued together. The brass bits are a close fit and are prevented from rotating by some dowel pins, so I figured it would be fine.

I fitted a top-bearing flush trim bit in the little router:






After very carefully setting the height so the cutter wouldn't cut brass, I worked steadily away at the holes until they were the same as the brass slot:






Something went slightly awry on the second hole - I think I wobbled a bit and lifted one side of the router up slightly. I don't think it matters though as it doesn't look horrendous and will be on the inside of the jaw.






With all those bits complete I could do another test fit:






Here it is with the top slid into place as well:






That brings us to a bit of a landmark: all the metal-mangling is complete (apart from whatever I decide to do about washers for the dual-screw end) and I can get back to some wood-worrying!

First job is to open up the slots for the vice mechanism bodies (to compensate for moving the shaft hole as I mentioned a while ago) and then I can do some functional tests.


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## Dr Al (21 Mar 2021)

Well, so much for "no more metalwork"... but more on that later.

This afternoon I started by working out how much extra space was needed for the vice mechanism. To do this, I fitted the vice mechanism to the fixed jaw and slid the foot up as far as it would go:






I could then measure how much the foot needed to move to get to the right place and therefore how much material to take away. Then I could mark it up and saw down the sides:






Chopping the material away was very quick as I was cutting along the grain:






Finally, I pared the bottom down to make it a bit neater (although it'll be hidden under the vice mechanism so it's not too important how it looks):






Having screwed the vice mechanisms to the fixed jaws, it seemed a good point to try one out with all the metal bushes / bearings etc in place. That's where I found that the vice mechanism didn't work. Lots and lots of profanity ensued.  






When I made the original vice mechanism prototype over Christmas, I did lots of testing to make sure it worked consistently and could be tightened very tight. When I modified the design to make it fit into a smaller space, I just checked it engaged and disengaged but didn't do any further testing. That was a mistake! What seemed to be happening was the geometry of the tube, the hinge bar location and the nut were such that as it tightened, the tube lifted off the threaded rod, which allowed the nut to drop away from the threaded rod.

After lots of messing around with various random scraps of material I had lying around, I worked out that all that was needed was something that would stop the tube from lifting when it was at the angle it sits when locking. I put one of the vice mechanisms back in the milling vice and drilled another 6 mm hole through both sides of the mechanism. I then turned a simple tube, 15 mm OD, 6 mm ID to sit on the new shaft and act as a stop.











The reason I went with a 6 mm shaft with a separate part sitting on it was it gave me room to tweak the diameter if it didn't work. I'm glad I did as for some reason I can't quite work out, one of the mechanisms needed a 16 mm tube instead of a 15 mm one. I presume it must be something to do with the location of the hinge bar (which is arbitrary) as I'm fairly sure I drilled the hole in the right place!

With this modification, the vice is rock-solid and clamps bits of wood extremely robustly. Phew! 

Anyway, with all the vice mechanisms modified and working well, I put the whole lot back together and clamped a random bit of wood in the dual-screw vice:






and cut the end off!






That was amazingly satisfying for such a simple job! 

This isn't really the purpose of the dual-screw vice (I'd usually use the standard vice for this sort of cut), but I'd assembled it with that end facing out so I figured it would do.

If you look closely at those last two pictures, you'll notice that I've clamped one of the feet down to the workbench. It's a sign of the heft and hence stability of this thing that it didn't wobble at all, even though the end I was using wasn't attached (apart from via the screw threads going loosely through the holes in the rails for the other vice) to the bit that was clamped down.

I'm a much happier bunny now than I was when I realised it wasn't clamping properly!


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## Dr Al (22 Mar 2021)

What with it being a work day again I didn't get much time today, but I did manage a little.

I took everything apart again and ran round a few of the edges (outside of the moving jaws and the edges of the feet) with a 6 mm Arris bit in my small router.






I then got some 120 grit sandpaper and gave everything a once over. For some strange reason, I elected to do this by hand rather than using any power tools. I don't know what came over me!






I'd been debating what to do about the feet as I wanted to round over the corners of the feet but it would look a bit odd if it blended into the hard edge of the fixed jaw. Without the rounded edge, I needed to do some adjustment to either the fixed jaw or the feet to either make them line up perfectly or make them look deliberately not aligned.

After playing around in the CAD model, I took the plunge and went round all the outside edges of the feet; hopefully it'll look okay when assembled having a rounded edge on a join.

You can (hopefully) see the where the rounded edge of the foot meets the square edge of the fixed jaw in the latest version of the CAD model:






Here's what one of the feet looks like after shaping and sanding to 120 grit. I'm definitely not going for perfection here: it is first and foremost a tool rather than something that has to look pretty.






While everything was apart, I took some photos of all the bits I've made so far:


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## Orraloon (23 Mar 2021)

I started watching this thread as ok another benchtop bench so worth a watch but its become the dog's thingies of benchtop benches. A woodworking thread where the metalwork is the star. Great to watch.
Regards
John


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## Dr Al (23 Mar 2021)

Orraloon said:


> I started watching this thread as ok another benchtop bench so worth a watch but its become the dog's thingies of benchtop benches. A woodworking thread where the metalwork is the star. Great to watch.
> Regards
> John



Thanks John


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## Dr Al (23 Mar 2021)

I wasn't expecting to have any time in the workshop today, but I got the food shopping done fairly early and couldn't resist spending an hour or so in the workshop.

The vice mechanism bodies for the dual-screw vice interfere with the beech rails that run along the sides underneath the top. My original plan was to cut away a section of the rail to allow for the vice mechanism bodies, but I decided to cut away the body instead. I put two of the vice mechanism bodies in the milling vice (one at a time) and hogged out a 12 mm × 4 mm section from the corner:






I then put each of the three vice mechanism bodies in the vice, centre drilled 3 mm and (very carefully) drilled 2.5 mm:






I then put an M3 tap in the chuck and turned it by hand to tap the holes. I generally avoid tapped holes as small as M3 given the choice, but I wanted a size that had a cap screw head diameter smaller than the 6 mm thickness of the plate.






Here you can see the tapped holes in all the bodies:






The reason for these holes is that the top surface of the workbench will have a number of dog holes drilled in it. Inevitably lots of sawdust etc is going to fall through the holes and I'd rather keep it out of the workings of the mechanism if possible (the mechanisms at the dual-screw vice end have to be removed from the workbench in order to get to them for cleaning or whatever).

To that end, I got some bits of 1.3 mm aluminium sheet out and marked the plastic-coated side:






I then used a Stanley knife to score along the marked lines. I find 10 strokes of the Stanley knife on each side of the sheet and then a little bit of bending back and forth results in a very clean and straight cut:






The resulting pieces:






I then marked the sheets out for the holes and centre punched fairly deeply:






Each sheet was then clamped down to my home-made fixture plate (drilling sheet metal is scary!) and drilled out 3.5 mm. The centre punch marks were deep enough that I didn't need to use a spotting drill first:






This is what the bodies look like with their lids attached:






I've left the plastic sheet on the aluminium for now; I'll peel it off when I'm closer to finishing everything.


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## Dr Al (24 Mar 2021)

I'm sure I said something about having done all the metalwork a while ago.  

One of the jobs on my list was to decide what to do about the washers for the dual screw vice. The latest version of the model has each screw having a pair of very custom washers designed to cope with angular misalignment:






I've had some ideas about how I might make those, but there's no doubt they'll take a lot of time and for the amount that I'll be clamping tapered stuff in the workbench I'm not convinced it's worth the effort, so for now I've decided to go with something simpler.

I put the fixed steady back in the lathe (thankfully it was still set up for 50 mm stock, so this was quick and easy) and made these simple washers (I didn't bother with in-progress photos as they would be very similar to a lot of previous photos):






Here's where they go:






I'd also be pondering more about the block I made to fix the central tube to the central vice mechanism and make it act as a stretcher. You may remember my earlier change of plan when I went from cap screw heads supporting the tube to having a block that clamps the tube to the vice mechanism. That resulted in some nasty cap screw locations and I didn't like that very much, so this evening I made a new one out of 60 mm EN1A. You can see the new one here along with the old one and the vice mechanism to which it attaches: I've drilled and tapped two new M5 holes for this new block to screw to.






Here it is fitted:






While I was in metalworking mode, I faced all the jam bars to length on the lathe and cleaned them up a little with some wet-and-dry paper as some were showing signs of rust already:






Just out of curiosity, I thought I'd try out the bottle of cold blue I bought a few years ago and still hadn't used:






I've already had to sand a bit of rust off the tops of the vice mechanism bodies as well, so I want to treat them in some way (and maybe some of the round steel parts) before I assemble them into the vice. I haven't decided what I'll do yet though.


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## TheTiddles (24 Mar 2021)

For up to 7-degrees (I think) you can use spherical seating washers, readily available
Aidan


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## Dr Al (26 Mar 2021)

I spent a bit more time sorting out the steel parts in an attempt to make them resilient to rust today. I experimented with a few different bluing methods, including heat & various types of oil, but I concluded that I preferred the look of the cold blued parts, so I decided to do that to the rest of the steel bits (apart from the tubes for the vice rails as they're too big to do easily so I think I'll just rely on grease or oil or something like that for them).

Here are all the remaining parts (apart from the vice bodies, which I cleaned up with a non-woven wheel on the angle grinder and then forgot to take a photo):






The bodies were a bit of a pain to blue: the instructions on the bottle suggest they should be submerged, but that would requite a LOT of cold blue! I just kept turning them and brushing the solution onto the bodies.






Here are all the parts having been blued, rinsed, oiled, left for an hour and then wiped:






The finish on the bits that were fully submerged came out quite well:






With that done, I figured it was time to start making stuff permanent (scary moment)! I started by gluing the magnets into the half-tubes. As it's always a good idea to make a major change at the point of gluing and without testing  , I decided to glue two magnets into each tube instead of just one. Hopefully that will increase the strength (not that it needs it really). I started by cleaning the bore carefully and then putting some Araldite around the rim:






I then pushed the pair of magnets into place and daubed over the inside and outside of the magnet. An offcut of threaded rod was used to wipe the excess from the inside and I carefully scraped most of the excess of the outside with a plastic spatula thing.






With that done, I thought I'd carry on with the gluing and fix some of the other bits together. Here are the bits that I glued in today. I've still got the hinge bars to glue in, but I'll do that tomorrow once the Araldite has set.






First I glued the bushes that run in the slots in the dual-screw vice into their new washers:






Then I glued all six jam bars into the bodies. That's all the gluing done for the day.






While I was waiting for the cold blue to do its magic, I also marked up the bench top for the dog holes. I'll drill them in the next day or two probably.






I've got next week booked off work, so it feels like I'm on the home straight now.


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## Dr Al (27 Mar 2021)

Today I acquired...






Some spherical seating washers. I decided to take good advice and just buy these components. Until I can get round to making spherical turning attachment for the lathe, this seemed like the best idea. According to the dimensions on the website I bought them from, the convex parts should have been a reasonable close but loose fit on the bushes I made and the concave ones should have a reasonable amount of clearance for angular adjustment. The latter was true, but the convex ones don't quite fit. I'll have to mount them on the lathe and skim a tenth of a millimetre or so off the bore.

More on that later.

As far as actual work on the bench goes, I started today by drilling out the dog holes for the top.






I then put a chamfer bit in my small router and chamfered all the holes slightly.






There had been a bit of tear out on the bottom of the holes (despite having a backing board: I hadn't clamped the top to the backing board so I think they separated as the drill bit went through). To hide some (but not all) of the tear out (which will never be seen anyway as it's on the underside of the top) I did the chamfer a bit deeper on the bottom.






I then put the workbench together with clamps so I could mark out the hole locations:






With the top in place, six of the dog holes are over part of the feet:






I marked the hole locations out by using my 20 mm Forstner bit and pressing down by hand. I then followed that up with an awl to make the mark more obvious.






My plan had been to drill these holes out 22 mm to allow for some movement in the top (which will be attached with buttons). The holes in the foot will be there to allow clearance for longer dogs to be inserted, but they won't be providing precise location or anything, so 22 mm seemed a good size.






Unfortunately, when I came to drill the holes out, I came across a bit of a problem. I was sure I had a 22 mm Forstner bit, but it seems I'm wrong! The outer holes are also only 11 mm from the edge of the wood so that size Forstner bit is probably not ideal. I'm going to ponder on this for a bit. I could just cut the end of that bit of the foot off, but I quite like the fact that the edge of the foot goes up to the rail. I could also cut out more selectively (cut a U-shaped bit out of the edge). To be determined...


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## Dr Al (27 Mar 2021)

Putting the decision about how to relieve the holes to one side for a bit, I decided to get on with the buttons for attaching the table top. I started by setting the table saw up at an appropriate height and offset for one side of the groove:






Two passes on each piece later and I have grooves all the way round so I can put the buttons anywhere I want:






I used an offcut from the scrap bin (it had several nasty knots in it, so wouldn't be much use for anything else) and used the table saw to cut the button outline:






I then cut two strips away from the block and did a test fit:






The two strips of buttons were put in the vice and marked up. This is going to produce WAY more buttons than I need, but it doesn't take much extra time to make them en masse and I can pick the best looking ones at the end:






The holes were drilled and countersunk (a bit raggedly):






I then used my home-made bench hook thing to separate the buttons. The stop makes this very quick to do:






I now have a big pile of buttons!


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## Dr Al (27 Mar 2021)

A very nice man sent me a bundle of strips of American Black Walnut.






I ripped three of these to size (two because I need them and one spare) and then planed them such that they were all exactly the same size. The actual size doesn't matter, but they need to match:






I then proceeded to play around with lots of ways of making a simple finger joint and concluded that it's quite hard to get it looking good! In the end I settled on using a biscuit cutting router bit:






I then extended the cut down with my dovetail saw and chiselled across the bottom to complete the joint.






I also took a long cut out on one of the pieces. I did this by cutting as far as I could safely manage with the table saw and then finishing off with a hand saw:


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## Dr Al (27 Mar 2021)

With a small lump in my throat, I set my cross-cut sled up to take a big chunk out of the fixed jaw of the dual-screw vice:






Having cut round two sides, using the little "kerfmaker" knock-off to get the right width, I used my baby router plane (one day I'll find an affordable big router plane for sale!) to clean up the bottom of the groove:






This little router plane doesn't have any built in height adjustment, so I set it on a couple of feeler gauge pieces and dropped it into the groove:






The slot looks much better after routing:






I could then check the fit:






This little insert (which won't be glued into place so it can be removed when not in use) gives a right-angle reference for lining up dovetails, something like this:






It needs a fair bit of tidying up before it's complete, but hopefully you get the idea. In practice I'd probably put something under the tail board (and lift the pin board up accordingly) to reduce the risk of the knife cutting into the moving jaw of the vice.


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## Dr Al (27 Mar 2021)

This afternoon I started with a very quick job: drilling a hole in the end of the fixed jaw for the standard vice. The aim of this hole is to be a loose fit for an off-the-shelf dowel. I don't want to have to modify the dowel as I expect to replace it fairly often. It'll act as a sacrificial "saw catcher" when I'm cutting through stock close to the jaws. If I overshoot at the end of the cut, the saw will drop onto the dowel rather than onto the bench (or whatever) underneath.

I did some tests with a few different drill bits and found I didn't have one that was tight enough to hold the dowel without being too tight. 10 mm is too tight, 10.5 mm is far too loose. I dug around in my "antediluvian tools" drawer and pulled out a set of drill bits I'd inherited from my father-in-law with a 13/32" (10.32 mm) drill bit, but again that was too loose. In the end I settled for drilling 10.32 mm to a reasonable depth and then drilling a little further 10 mm. The dowel slips most of the way in easily and then sits firmly if pushed the last couple of millimetres. As it's only gripped at the last couple of millimetres, it's easy to pull back out again.






Next I fitted a stop block onto my router table (just a bit of wood clamped to the fence):






Then, taking a couple of millimetres off at a time, I cut a groove in one of the fixed jaws.






The result:






I then marked out and chiselled out an extra bit. This is (deliberately) not as deep as the routed groove.






With the foot in place, the result is a rectangular hole that's a loose fit for the dovetail guide I showed in the last post. The stepped bit in the top is a slightly tight fit in the section I chiselled out. When the dovetail guide isn't being used, it'll get slid into its home and will hopefully stay there but be easy enough to remove when required.


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## Dr Al (27 Mar 2021)

Next job was (scary) to start to glue the first few bits together. Before doing that, I thought I'd get some photos of everything pre-gluing.


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## Dr Al (27 Mar 2021)

The first bits to get glued together are the feet to the fixed jaws. The dual-screw vice end fixed jaw is aligned with lots of dowels and a bit of the tube that I've used for vice rails. The standard vice end is aligned with the two vice rail bushes. I got everything set up and mixed up some more Araldite (as it has a much longer open time than the wood glue).






I then glued and banged in the dowels and pushed the tube into place (without glue). I didn't take any more photos for a while after this one as everything gets a bit frantic when I'm gluing stuff together!






Finally (for this one) I pushed everything together, clamped it, wiped all (or at least as much as possible of) the squeezed-out glue off and then pulled the tube back out again (I'll glue that in later). The other end was much simpler, but before starting on the wood glue, I put some of the mixed-up epoxy on the inside of the flange where the vice rails (and the screw bush while I was at it) sit:






Since I was on a bit of an Araldite roll, I also epoxied the bearing block into the moving jaw for the standard vice and the two slotted bushes into the moving jaw for the dual-screw vice. The flanges were definitely a good thing on the other brass bits - there was a lot of messy squeezed-out Araldite at the bottom of the hole for the slotted bushes. I cleaned up as much as I could, but I'll have to do more when the epoxy has cured.

Here's everything clamped as it is now:






I also glued the hinge bars into place. To do this, I fitted each one dry, then slid it out one way and put a very small drop of Loctite 603 on the end, then slid it the other way and repeated that. I'm hoping that this results in the hinge bar being held in place but the nut still pivoting on the hinge bar. If it jams up I can always get it undone again with acetone or heat.






Finally I glued the dovetail guide up by clamping it to a small welding square. This will need more work to clean it up a bit, but I'll do that once the glue has dried.






That brings us to the end of the day's work. It's been a major step today as it's the first time I really can't go backwards and change something (without going shopping for more beech and basically starting again!). Hopefully when I go out tomorrow morning I won't find anything drastically wrong!


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## TheTiddles (27 Mar 2021)

Spherical seating washers aren’t precision components unfortunately, they’re mostly used to bolt I-beams together, which at least makes them cheap


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## Dr Al (28 Mar 2021)

The feet/jaw assemblies look okay having come out of the clamps (although I won't know whether everything is aligned properly until I'm quite a bit further on, so I'm just having to hope for the best for now).







With the clamps all removed, I could put a bit more epoxy into the fixed jaw for the dual-screw vice:






The screw bushes for that vice could then be fitted and clamped in place:






The vice mechanism body for the standard vice could be fitted at this point. The other vice mechanism bodies will have to be fitted when the whole workbench is assembled as they need to be slid into place along the threaded rod: there's no access to the top of the body once the vice mechanism is fitted and hence there's no way to drop the hinged nut assembly into place. It'll be much more awkward, but all being well will only need to be done once!






I then decided to bite the proverbial bullet and fit the rails. In my mind this is the most scary bit as the movement of these rails in their bushes will either make the vice lovely and smooth to use or it will make it jam up and be next to impossible to use. I genuinely have no idea what I'll do if the latter is true!

I started by clamping the foot down to the workbench and fitting the rails into the rail bushes. I then slid the moving vice jaw on for a test fit:






Then I took a deep breath, plonked a load of Araldite in the bottom of the holes for the rails and then clamped everything together. I used the wooden rails that support the table top as spacers between the moving and fixed jaw: they're the same size as each other so will keep the two jaws parallel while giving some clearance just in case there's any Araldite squeeze-out.


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## Dr Al (28 Mar 2021)

With all that epoxy setting, there isn't much I can do for the rest of today, but I thought I'd get on with one little outstanding job that could be done without touching any of the epoxied pieces: sorting out the bore in the spherical seating washers I bought.

There isn't much material to hold on to in the lathe, so I decided this was a job for my home-made soft jaws (made out of some hex bar stock I bought on ebay a while ago). Brass is an odd material for soft jaws, but when I was looking for some very large hex stock, there was a local ebay seller selling a bit off and it was cheaper than buying a length of steel from a steel supplier.

I started by clamping a bit of scrap in the soft jaws. The diameter of the scrap was chosen to minimise the amount I had to take off the soft jaws (to prolong their life).






With the jaws firmly clamped I could then machine a recess of the same diameter as the washer.






The washer then sits against the back of the recess and is held firmly on the perimeter:






Machining the bore was straightforward as I wasn't aiming for a very precise fit: it just had to slide over the flanged part that sits on the threaded rod.






While I had the soft jaws fitted and set to the right diameter, I decided to mount the convex washers and machine the face. They had a slightly rough finish and I figured it would mar the brass slotted bushes quite quickly without touching up.






On the first one I did I made two mistakes: I started the facing cut with the cutter very close to the piece and I forgot to switch the power feed from turning to facing. As a result, I took a light cut on the outside bore. I usually keep the cutter a little way away from the cut - that way if I have the power feed going the wrong way it just passes by the outside of the part. I was more careful on the second one!

You can see the result of my mistake on the right-hand most piece in this picture of all four pieces:






The parts then got a dunking in cold blue for a few minutes before rinsing in water.






The finished result after a quick air line dry and before coating with oil and leaving alone for the coating to harden.






The cold blue has hidden most of the evidence of my earlier mistake: you can still see it if you're looking for it but it's far less obvious now.

At the moment I can't think of anything else I can do on this until the epoxy has fully cured (14 hours according to the packet), so that's probably it for the day.


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## Dr Al (28 Mar 2021)

The problem with having nothing to do on the project while the glue dry is it gets me thinking.

I've decided to make a small (but awkward now that it's glued together) change to the design. I'm going to shorten the feet. At the moment, they stick out about 75 mm on each side of the body. I'm going to trim that down to 60 mm (or a little under). It'll still provide plenty of clamping area I think but will make the overall width of the workbench a little smaller (500 mm rather than 530 mm).

Updated CAD model:






The reason I want to do this is that I plan to keep the workbench on top of the table saw when not in use (and probably will also use it while it's on the table saw). At the moment the space on top of the table saw is occupied by my cross-cut sled. What hadn't occurred to me before now is that the depth of the cross-cut sled is 500 mm, so if the bench is that size or less, it'll fit neatly on the sled. If it's wider than that, I'll have to find a new home for the sled and I can't think of where that might be!

Cutting the feet shorter will be very straightforward I think: either with a hand saw or with the table saw and the cross-cut sled. What's going to be difficult is re-rounding over the edges. With the fixed jaws in place, the only way I'll be able to get the router to the end of the feet will be end on, but the surface area is far too small. Hopefully I'll be able to rig something up so that the foot (and it's attached jaw) is clamped to something firmly, but also have a raised work surface around the foot end to support the router base. Something to think about tomorrow anyway.

While I was out there pondering, I also decided that I'll probably screw the support rails into the feet and fixed jaws. I'd initially planned to glue them (and I still will), but I'd been considering dowels and such like. I think all that is too much faff for little benefit, so I'll cover the area in glue, plonk the vice rail in place and screw it down to both the foot and the fixed jaw. The screws will be hidden by the bench top. I've marked up where the holes will go, but I'll drill out the clearance holes, pilot holes and countersinks later:


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## Dr Al (29 Mar 2021)

I went out this morning and marked up where I was going to cut the feet off to shorten them a little. I decided to go for 20 mm shortening rather than 15 mm as it looked like plenty. I marked all four feet with some pencil lines around three sides, then clamped one of the parts to the bench:






I then started sawing. This is how far I got before I realised I'm a moron:






This is where the line should have been:






I marked up three of them correctly and one of them completely wrong and in my morning groggy state, I didn't notice that one looked completely different to the others and, of course, started with that one.

After playing around with a hastily made test piece, I decided to fix it in a similar way to my earlier non-concentric hole. I dug out an offcut of walnut from my drawer and cut it into pieces (with extras as spares just in case):






I decided to use the table saw to do all the cutting as I can set-up the stop on the cross-cut sled and ensure consistency (i.e. stop myself from being a moron twice in one day!). It was a bit awkward as the foot is a lot wider than the support area for the sled, but there's enough of a flat area that I can get it sitting flat on the sled and then clamp it in place. I had to use the stop in one position for the one side of each foot...






... and in another position for the other side of each foot:






I then used my kerfmaker thing to cut the grooves. As I was feeling paranoid and in case of small differences in the walnut thickness, I re-set the kerfmaker for each walnut piece and also did a test cut in a piece of scrap for each walnut piece.






My baby router plane is too big to fit into this slot (it's about 6 mm wide), so I used my 3 mm chisel to square up the bottom of the cut (I actually cut it a bit concave as that was safer than cutting it convex). I checked the walnut pieces sat properly against the two edges (front and back) and then glued and clamped them into place.






Once the glue had been left for long enough to be thoroughly dry (and I'd enjoyed sometime sitting in the sun in the garden), I went and had a look at the feet. I decided I wasn't going to take any risks, so I wrapped three layers of masking tape around the end of the feet and used my flush cutting saw to cut the walnut flush to the masking tape (this avoided any chance of undercutting).






I then attacked it with some 120 grit sandpaper until it looked right:


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## Dr Al (29 Mar 2021)

Earlier in the day, while I was having a break from touching any real parts in case I did anything stupid again, I decided to make up a few jaw test pieces to help me choose a finish for the bench.






Two of them are going to be left as-is, two will get coated with boiled linseed oil, one will get some leather stuck to it and one will be a spare. The holes are counterbored for M8 cap screws for attachment to my bench vice - the current jaws are attached with countersunk screws but I've got a LOT more cap screws than countersunk screws, so this gives me more options for length (and they're only for testing). The plan is to attach these to the bench vice and do some strength testing comparing:


 Unfinished jaws
 Jaws coated in boiled linseed oil
 Fixed jaw unfinished and moving jaw covered in leather
 Fixed jaw coated in boiled linseed oil and moving jaw covered in leather

The instructions on my internet-bought bottle of boiled linseed oil are a little opaque for someone linguistically challenged like me:






So I just daubed it on with a paintbrush and kept adding more over about half-an-hour wherever there were bits looking dry.






I then wiped off the excess and I'll leave that until tomorrow. Hopefully one coat will be enough for the purposes of this test.






For the leather coated jaw, I hand-stretched the leather along the bench, using some offcuts of wood and some clamps to hold it in place. I then slid a bit of greaseproof paper underneath to protect the bench:






After applying contact adhesive with a filling knife over both pieces and leaving for five minutes or so, I pressed the beech jaw onto the leather and then transferred it to the vice for an extra squeeze.






After a couple of minutes of squeezing, it came out of the vice.






A bit of the contact adhesive has bled around the edges, so I'll have to be more careful on the final piece if I go this way.






I trimmed the edge off (which got rid of most, but not all, of the contact adhesive that had bled round) and opened up the holes.






I'll do some (probably not very scientific) tests with these bits tomorrow once the linseed oil has had time to dry.


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## Dr Al (30 Mar 2021)

I started today by doing some test assemblies. I put each of the vices together separately and played around with them a lot. They work really well!

I then slid the two assemblies together with the screws of the dual-screw vice running in the rails of the standard vice. In this configuration, the friction was massively increased (and I hadn't even fitted the stretcher bar) and I had to have the vices clamped to the bench to slide the standard vice in and out with the quick-release mechanism released (otherwise pulling on the vice jaw just moved the whole bench).

I decided I wasn't happy about this so that necessitated a change of plan! The original idea was that the rails would support the screws as they move, but with 20 mm threaded rod, it really isn't necessary. The holes in the tube I used are a fairly close fit on the threaded rod, so any slight misalignment of the two ends of the vice means it all gets a bit jammed up.

So, onto plan B: make the holes in the tubes a bit bigger. First I had to remove the rails from the moving jaw as I'd epoxied them in. That was quite straightforward: grip them in an ER40 30 mm collet and give them a quick twist:






I then dug around in my big drill drawer to find a 22 mm drill bit. It's not quite long enough...






I've got a cheap old set of blacksmith's drills with a 12.7 mm (1/2") shank. I got a piece of 20 mm EN8 out of a drawer and drilled the end out 12.7 mm.






I then went with a belt-and-braces approach as I really don't want this to come loose while it's binding a bit deep in a tube, so I glued it into the hole with Loctite 603 and then cross-drilled.






I then banged in a (shortened with a Dremel) roll-pin.






I started by drilling out from each end with my Morse taper 22 mm drill bit. Since the bore is going to be 2 mm wider than the threaded rod that goes into it, I (thankfully) don't have to worry about this being pretty.






I went in as far as I could from both ends and then fitted my super-long drill bit in a collet chuck in the tail stock:






As the flutes of the blacksmith's drill are so short, I had to withdraw the drill after every couple of millimetres, but I got there in the end.

At one point in each of the two rails, the Morse taper drill be bound, resulting in the part spinning in the chuck. It was easy enough to free it up, but it left some grooves in the rails:






I cleaned these up with emery cloth so that the rails still slide freely in the bushes.






I don't think it's a problem really - that bit of the rail is only in the bush when the vice is opened to about 200 mm (which won't happen often, or possibly ever) and I can't feel any difference in the rail movement: the bit that's been emery-clothed is much shorter than the length of the rail bush.

While I was drilling the rails, I also did the stretcher bar. I then drilled the stretcher bar out to 25 mm from each end. There's a little bit (about 10 mm) in the middle where the 25 mm drill bit didn't reach, but I just drilled that out to 22 mm with my long drill bit as it didn't seem worth making a long 25 mm drill bit, especially since I don't think my blacksmith's drill set goes that big. The main reason I went further with the stretcher bar than the rails was just that it doesn't do much and I figured it would save a little weight!


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## Dr Al (30 Mar 2021)

With all the rails adjusted again, I decided it was time to go for the big assemble! I started by gluing the stretcher bar flange onto the bar using Loctite 603.






I then clamped both ends of the bench to my workbench to make sure the feet were sitting flat and level. For the front feet, this was easy. For one of the back feet I used a hold-down clamp through one of the dog holes in my bench. I've only got one hold-down clamp (another one is now on order!) so I had to improvise for the other clamp by fixing one of my dog-hole fillers to the bench from underneath and then using a milling clamp.

The original plan (and the reason for the very wide feet) was that the feet would all lie over holes in my bench (which would give me options like having holes through the feet and clamping down that way), but that's not possible with the shortened feet, so I'll just use hold-down clamps, which will do the job just fine.






Next job was to fill the three 30 mm holes with lots of epoxy. I then removed the vice mechanism from the standard vice & fitted the stretcher bar. I could then slide the vice mechanism back into place and align the stretcher bar so that the flange could be screwed to the vice mechanism. Getting the last screw into the vice mechanism was an interesting endeavour with the extra jam bar in place, but I got there in the end.






Next I slid the rails out and covered the bit where they touch in glue:






I then fitted the rails, clamped them in place sideways and used a combined pilot drill and countersink followed by a 5 mm clearance drill to prepare the holes for fixing the rails with 60 mm long 5 mm screws.






It's all looking very permanent:






A quick test fit of the top to make sure I hadn't done anything stupid:






The area where the dual-screw vice foot meets the rails struck me as a little weak. The buttons will be grabbing onto this to hold the top on, but this didn't look especially strong:






I had an offcut of beech that was (surprisingly) the right thickness, so I got the Ryoba out and cut a few little triangles:






I then covered them and the slot in glue and banged them into place. Hopefully that will help keep the rail and the foot together a bit better:






I did all four corners because, well, why not?


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## Dr Al (30 Mar 2021)

Final job of the day was to do some tests on the vice jaws I made.

I fitted each configuration in turn and used the same bit of oak as a test bar:






With the test bar mounted at the top of the vice, I turned the vice screw until it just held the bar in place, then tried 1/8 turn, 1/4 turn and as tight as I would normally tighten the vice (highly subjective that one) and tried yanking the end of the bar up and down. The results were surprisingly clear, although the linseed oil did leave some marks on the oak, so it obviously hadn't fully dried yet.

Best of the test was leather on the moving jaw and unfinished fixed jaw. I did have to tighten this more than the non-leather tests, but I don't think that's a fair comparison as the leather compresses and hence it was very easy to tighten the vice further than I could tighten the non-leather ones. At a "reasonable vice tightening", it was far more rigid than the non-leather ones.

Second best was leather on the moving jaw and linseed oil on the fixed jaw. There wasn't much difference to be honest, but I could just about get some movement here when I really wrenched the bar.

Third was unfinished/unfinished. Once it reached 1/4 turn beyond just-gripping, it took a lot of force to move it, but it definitely didn't hold as well as the leather ones.

Last by quite a long way was linseed oil/linseed oil. I had to get this really tight before it felt like it was well held and even then I could move it. I might try this again in a day or two after the oil has had more time to dry.


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## Blaidd-Drwg (30 Mar 2021)

As a non-metal worker, this has been an extremely interesting thread. Very impressive.


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## Orraloon (1 Apr 2021)

Dr Al said:


> I went out this morning and marked up where I was going to cut the feet off to shorten them a little. I decided to go for 20 mm shortening rather than 15 mm as it looked like plenty. I marked all four feet with some pencil lines around three sides, then clamped one of the parts to the bench:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Very nice save.
Regards
John


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## Dr Al (1 Apr 2021)

Yesterday the postman delivered a 22 mm Forstner bit, so I started today by drilling the clearance holes for the dogs. I clamped a bit of scrap (cut to length using the vice in this bench!) in the vice mechanism "pocket" and used the Forstner bit in my cordless drill to drill to a depth of about 30 mm to give plenty of space for dogs.






All the holes drilled:






Here it is after the vacuum cleaner had done its stuff:






With those holes drilled, I could fit the vice mechanisms for the dual-screw vice. This was a bit of an ordeal, but I got there in the end. I started by pulling the two vice jaws out so that there was some space between the dual-screw vice's thread and the standard vice's rail:






With the screws pushed into their countersunk holes, the mechanism body was then pushed onto the threaded rod & the hinged nut fitted over the threaded rod at the same time.






The lid was then fitted and from there it was a case of much fiddling to get the Torx driver onto the screws and get all the screws into their pilot holes. It was much easier on the second mechanism once I'd figured out a good way of doing it. Having assembled it all the first time, one of the screws wasn't tightening consistently so I had to take it apart again. Thankfully it was just a bit of epoxy squeeze-out that had settled on the outside of the tube part of the hinged nut and that was easily scraped off.

If I were to do this again (which I can guarantee I won't!), I'd get rid of the "wings" on the top of the dual-screw vice end foot so that I could access the top of the vice mechanism. I don't think it's necessary (and you'll see later that I didn't put buttons in that section) and it would have meant I could put the lid on after fitting the mechanism body and hence see what I was doing when tightening the screws.


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## Dr Al (1 Apr 2021)

Next up was the buttons to attach the top. I flipped the whole thing over and spread some buttons around the rim. I went with twelve buttons in the end, which is almost certainly excessive, but I intend to clamp things to the top and I wanted to be sure it was very firmly attached.






With the buttons spaced roughly, I used a 2 mm Allen key as a spacer to make sure there was room for movement of the top and used a punch to mark the locations of the holes:






As I was marking the hole locations, I also put a pencil cross on each one just to be sure I would drill pilot holes in the right places:






I was feeling paranoid about drilling the pilot holes too deep, so rather than relying on a masking tape "flag", I set the depth stop on the drill press and drilled all the holes there:






It was probably quicker that way to be honest: once it was set up, the holes were drilled really quickly as I didn't have to think about depth.






With that all done, the buttons could be fitted and the top is now attached:






This feels like a major landmark to me. I've still got to decide on a finish and then apply it and finally fit leather to the moving jaws, but it's essentially complete and entirely usable.
















The dovetail guide thing fits really well in its slot in the dual-screw vice fixed jaw, but is too loose in its parking place in the side, so I'll probably add a sliver of something into that pocket to tighten it up.

Before committing to a finish, I decided to go back and do some more tests. The linseed oil test jaw has now had a couple of extra days of drying time and last night I coated the unfinished fixed jaw with Danish Oil to give me another test piece to play with (I'll stick with the leather coated moving jaw as that seems to work really well). I wanted to do the test with the same piece of oak I'd used for testing the first time round. However, last night I did a big reorganise of all of my wood to make it much more accessible - the ends of all the pieces are now visible so I stand a better chance of getting to any given piece. In doing that, I seem to have misplaced the one piece of oak I need so I need to do some hunting around now to figure out where on earth I put it!


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## Dr Al (1 Apr 2021)

Before sanding and oiling, I remembered that I needed to drill some more holes, so I (very carefully) added the dog holes to both moving jaws and chamfered them. I did a lot of test chamfers in bits of scrap to be sure I was getting the chamfer depth just right to match the existing ones!






That allowed me to do a quick test of clamping long stuff. In practice, I doubt I'll clamp anything this long as the clamped wood is likely to bow a bit under the clamping pressure, but it worked and that's quite satisfying. The stock in this photo is one metre long; maximum realistic length is a little under 1.2 metres, but I didn't have anything of about the right length and it seemed a bit daft to cut something up for the purposes of a test!






I'd be surprised if I ever use it in this configuration (with both jaws open), but my existing vice gets used with dogs in the vice and the bench all the time (usually with a bit of wood mounted on the dogs to protect the clamped wood), so I do expect to use it with one of the vice jaws open and the dogs fitted.


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## willsie01 (1 Apr 2021)

What software do you use for the CAD?


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## Dr Al (1 Apr 2021)

willsie01 said:


> What software do you use for the CAD?



The images in this are from a piece of software called ZW3D Lite. In general I use a mixture of things depending on what I'm doing, but mainly Onshape, ZW3D Lite and CADQuery.

I bought ZW3D Lite as it allows me to do stuff that isn't public, which I occasionally need to, although it's not *quite *as good as Onshape. When I was looking at choosing CAD software, I spent 3 months trialling lots of different options including Fusion (which is good, but nowhere near as good as Onshape) and Alibre Atom 3D (which is rubbish). There's a long post I wrote about it here: 3D design software and here: 3D design software

My usual recommendation for anyone thinking of getting started in 3D CAD is Onshape as first choice, then probably Fusion 360 as second choice, although FreeCAD is getting better and better (and is less risky than Fusion 360 with their history of making free licences more and more restrictive).


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## Dr Al (1 Apr 2021)

This afternoon I got on with the last few jobs before oiling. I thought it best to take everything apart (that will come apart) before oiling and to make re-assembly easier, I decided to drill two more small (6 mm to suit the head of an M3 cap screw) holes in the body:






These were carefully positioned over the screws for the lids of the vice mechanisms. When I'm re-fitting the vice mechanisms after oiling, I will be able to do so with the lids removed and then fit the lids afterwards by offering the screw up with some tweezers and putting the Allen key through the new hole:






That should make it much easier to fit the mechanism as I'll be able to see what's going on!

I also decided to fill a knot in the top surface with some five minute epoxy. This is the knot before:






This is it daubed with epoxy:






This is it after chiselling off the excess and then sanding flat:


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## Dr Al (1 Apr 2021)

With the knot filled there was nothing for it but to get on with applying Danish Oil to all the beech parts. I sanded everything again to 120 grit, masked the inside faces of the moving jaws with masking tape (along with some masking tape on the outside of the holes that go through to the inside faces to prevent drip-through) and then laid out all the parts on some greaseproof paper on every available surface:






The body is held up at one end on a V-block on a piece of wood; the other end is sitting on some paint points on the underside of the cut-out of the foot:






The moving jaw for the dual-screw vice is simply sitting on a block of wood (masking tape side down); the moving jaw for the standard vice was raised off the bench using a couple of V-blocks and a clamp (bearing down on a third V-block positioned upside-down):






The top is sitting on top of my cross-cut sled on the table saw, on some paint points. This is what it looks like after the first coat:






Here's the body and jaws after the first coat. Despite laying out the dovetail alignment thing for oiling, I completely forgot to do so and can't be bothered right now, so I'll do that when I do the second coat tomorrow.






There are some areas where I obviously didn't sand enough to get rid of all the glue squeeze-out, but they're very minor so I'll sort them out before doing the second coat. I was expecting some issues but applying the first coat of oil is the easiest way to be sure of spotting them! I sometimes squirt wood with some water to look for blemishes, but it doesn't catch as much as the oil will.

The walnut insert on the moving jaw for the standard vice looks lovely in my opinion:


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## Dr Al (2 Apr 2021)

I started this morning by sanding the areas where there was evidence of glue squeeze-out and then giving everything a once over with some grey Scotchbrite before doing another coat of Danish Oil (including the dovetail guide this time).

Once that was done, there wasn't much more that could be done in the woodworking end of the garage, so I had a go at making some leather punches. I'm going to cover the entirety of the inside face of the moving jaws with leather and that means the leather needs holes for the various tubes and screws that go through the face. I didn't fancy my chances of manually cutting round holes, so I thought I'd have a go at home-made punches.

I decided I couldn't be bothered with the idea of hardening steel as they would only be used once. That meant that making the punches was quick and fairly simple - I put the stock in the chuck (I used an offcut of the tube for the tube holes and some bits of 303 that I'd got out of a skip for the others) and set the top-slide at 25°. I drilled a central hole (in the 303: the tube obviously didn't need one) to give access for the boring bar and then just hacked a bit out until it had a sharp edge.






After making a test punch and doing some trials, the test punch cut well on the first attempt but (being unhardened) got a bit mashed in the process and hence made a ragged cut on the second attempt. As the punches were taking me about 5 minutes to make per punch, I just decided to make seven of them (two are double-ended, hence it looking like there are only five!) - one punch per hole:






You can see the two test cuts I did on the scrap of leather in the bottom-left: the one on the right is the second cut with the punch and is much more ragged.

The 25 mm ones are double-ended (so I get four cuts out of the two punches) to save material, so I also turned the little block on the left that will give me something to hit without damaging the upper cutting edge. They'll be used for each end of the holes over the slotted bushes and I'll sort the edge out with a chisel. The two 30 mm ones made out of tube are very different lengths as I cut a small piece off, made it into a punch and then used what was left to make the second punch. These will be used for the rail holes. The big one is 50.8 mm (2") as I had a lump of 303 in that size (from a skip) and it'll give clearance for the 50 mm rotating bush that will sit in this hole.

The rest of today is probably going to be waiting for the Danish Oil to dry, so I'm going to get on with some motorcycle maintenance in the meantime!


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## Jameshow (2 Apr 2021)

Well done! 

Feeling depressed at my jack of skills!!! 

Cheers James


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## David bonner (2 Apr 2021)

Dr Al said:


> Earlier in the day, while I was having a break from touching any real parts in case I did anything stupid again, I decided to make up a few jaw test pieces to help me choose a finish for the bench.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I hope that the workbench gets done and put back together then.


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## RichieG (2 Apr 2021)

Has been great following this. It's a work of art! Thanks for the comprehensive updates


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## Dr Al (3 Apr 2021)

The first job of the day was to take a deep breath and have a go at fitting the leather. I had no spare leather and have never worked with this material (apart from for the test jaws) before, so I was a bit nervous about this. I started by getting a bit of 9 mm plywood (that came as part of the packaging for a very well-protected #7 plane I recently acquired) and drilling three holes in it. These didn't have to be super accurate, so I just marked them out and drilled them on the drill press. The outer two holes were drilled with a 30 mm Forstner bit; the inner hole was cut with a 50.8 mm (2") hole saw as I'd made the punch 50.8 mm to give clearance around the 50 mm threaded bush.







You can see in the photo that I also put masking tape all the way around the rim of the jaws to stop contact adhesive getting on the oiled faces. Next I clamped one end of the longer piece of leather to the plywood and stretched it by hand before clamping the other end. I could have done with more hands for this, but I got there in the end!






I could then use three of my home-made punches to make the holes. For each hole I positioned the hole location over one of the bench legs (scaffolding poles), put the punch in place and then hit it repeatedly with a hammer.






It seemed to work well, giving clean cuts. There was obviously something on the old cutting mat I used as a base as it has stained the leather slightly near one of the jaws. Thankfully this is the contact adhesive side, so it's not a problem, but it gave me good warning to use some extra protection when I do the other jaw, which will be punched with the visible side on the cutting mat.






I took the offcuts of leather and put masking tape on them and then cut round a slightly larger circle by eye with a craft knife:






I could then use these circles to mask the area immediately around the holes and make sure no contact adhesive got through and on to the visible face. I also put masking tape along the edge of the leather (which is slightly wider than the jaw so there's space for this outside the adhesive area). Finally, I put some lithium grease on the threaded insert, pushed it into place and then masked over the top of that as well. The contact adhesive could then be spread over both faces:






After leaving it for about 10 minutes to get tacky, I flipped the leather-clad plywood over and slide it over the rails of the jaw. I then got a bit carried away clamping it together:






After 5 minutes or so to be sure it had set (the packet says it's an instant bond requiring no clamping, but I figured it couldn't hurt to err on the side of caution), I took the clamps off and (with some paper between the cutting mat and the leather), trimmed all the way round the jaw:






That worked surprisingly well:


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## Dr Al (3 Apr 2021)

Next up was the dual-screw jaw. For this one, I didn't punch the holes first, so laying everything out was relatively simple. The only challenge was that the leather piece I was using for this was only a little wider than the jaw, so stretching and clamping it was much more difficult. I used the same plywood piece as a base; if you look closely you can see some darker patches where the holes are underneath the leather.






Once the contact adhesive had been left for 10 minutes, I flipped the jaw over onto the leather and again covered it in clamps:






This is what it looked like after trimming the excess around the edges:






The punches could then be used with the slotted bushes acting as a guide to get the holes punched in the same place. If I were doing this again, I'd drill the central hole a lot deeper in the punches and have a longer stub on the "hammering insert": it tended to fly out of the hole when I hit it and it would have been nicer for it to be better retained.






I could then use a chisel against the flat surface of the slotted bush to join the two punched holes together. This went through the leather with very little force (I guess I'm used to paring wood with it!)






The end result:


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## Dr Al (3 Apr 2021)

I started the morning thinking the only thing left to do on the bench was to fit the leather pieces to the moving jaws and then assemble everything. However, during the course of the day I had a bit of brain wave and decided to use a different method for retaining the dovetail guide. You may remember that it had been intended to be a light friction fit in the outer part of the hole, but ended up being a bit loose. Rather than try to make the hole smaller with an insert of some sort, I thought I'd just add some "bling"!

I started by drilling a 15 mm hole in the side of the foot and then drilling 11.1 mm a bit deeper. I could then screw in a threaded insert and have its head completely hidden below the surface:






A suitable chunk of brass was retrieved from my brass drawer and I put it in the three-jaw chuck and shaped it with my upside-down brass tool, a simple chamfer tool and a parting tool to cut some relief:






I then took the lazy option and used my home-made tail-stock die holder to cut an M8 thread on the end of the brass bar:






I made a quick steel insert for the rear of a collet as ER collets don't clamp very well on very short stock and having a little bit of the same diameter stock at the back of the collet makes a big difference:






I then fitted the collet chuck, clamped the brass piece (the other way round to how it was mounted in the three-jaw chuck) in the collet chuck and turned it down to 39.57 mm (which, according to my knurl calculator is the next size down from 40 mm for a good pattern with my knurls). I know many people say that you don't have to get the diameter right before knurling, but I've always had good results when I have set the diameter right and given it only takes a few seconds to do a finish pass before knurling, I always do this.

The oil pump was turned on and I got knurling:






I then put the upside-down tool back in the tool-post and turned away a lot of the excess, before chamfering both sides:


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## Dr Al (3 Apr 2021)

The dovetail guide clamp could then be fitted into its hole and tightened. I used an engineer's square to mark a line that is away from the dovetail guide in the fully-tightened position:






I then put the clamp back into its collet (with the rear spacer piece again) and into a collet block on the mill, oriented with the scribed line roughly horizontal. I then milled about 8 mm off the top:






The finished clamp (after hand-filing some chamfers around the milled flat):






This is what it looks like when locked:






Half-a-turn anticlockwise and the dovetail guide can be easily removed:


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## Dr Al (3 Apr 2021)

With that done, there was nothing left to do but assemble everything. First the moving jaws, screws and mechanisms were fitted (this was much, much easier with the lids removed):






The lids could then be fitted, using a pair of tweezers to push the hidden screws into the right place:






I then fitted four bench dogs into the top (to raise it off the surface of my bench when upside down) and flipped everything over. The buttons could then be fitted:






Here's a view of the vice jaws for the standard vice:






Here are the vice jaws for the dual-screw vice:






This is a quick test of a rather extreme taper. This is way beyond the limits of the off-the-shelf spherical seating washers (as you can see by the way the washers aren't seating against the slotted bushes), but it clamped the stock extremely rigidly. I doubt I'll ever use it for something this extreme!






Although it was always bound to work, this is a quick test of clamping long stock vertically:


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## Dr Al (3 Apr 2021)

Not much more to say really, just time for a photo-shoot.











The walnut insert on the standard vice moving jaw:






Detail shot of the dovetail guide & clamp:






This is where the portable workbench will spend most of its time:






It's surprisingly robust just sitting on the cross-cut sled and can easily be used for clamping and cutting stock without having to clamp the workbench down.

And that, as they say, is that.


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## Fitzroy (3 Apr 2021)

Brill! Not a lot else to say, except big thanks for the effort taken to document and share the build, entertaining, educational, and very interesting!


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## Orraloon (5 Apr 2021)

A lot of work went into just putting this great thread out for us to share so thanks for all the effort. And at the risk of repeating myself it surely is the dog's thingies of benchtop benches.
Regards
John


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