Leg vice on an MFT table?

[Luckosaurous]

I’m planning a new workbench.

I have a double garage, but it fits two (cars nose to tail, rather than side by side) so effectively it has all of the constraints of a single car garage only with more of that constrained space. What this means is that I need everything in there to be as functional as possible.

I don’t currently do any hand tool work, but one day I would like to, and so I want my workbench to be suitable for both power and hand tools.

I’ve been inspired by the dashboard pws, i love how well thought out it is for power tool use, however I don’t need its portability and so I think I can make something better suited to my needs that could be a little more robust.

I wanted to make a hybrid between an MFT and a nichleson workbench, and I wanted to put a leg vice on it. However my concern is, that if there is an aluminium extrusion around apron, then the vice may damage the wood I’m holding by pushing it into the uneven surface of the extrusion?

Does anyone have any experience of something similar?

The alternative would be just to use normal track clamps to pin work to the apron, via t-track on the apron, but not sure the clamps would have enough holding power.

So any insight is warmly appreciated.

 

[Inspector]

Why does the inside face of your vice have to be flush? The face of my Record 52 1/2 isn't flush to the front edge of top and in over 40 years of use it hasn't been a problem. There isn't anything stopping you from mounting the vertical face proud to the aluminium extrusion. If down the road you feel some need to have that space filled a board can be hung from the same extrusion and removed when you don't want it on.

Pete

 

[Luckosaurous]

Why does the inside face of your vice have to be flush? The face of my Record 52 1/2 isn't flush to the front edge of top and in over 40 years of use it hasn't been a problem. There isn't anything stopping you from mounting the vertical face proud to the aluminium extrusion. If down the road you feel some need to have that space filled a board can be hung from the same extrusion and removed when you don't want it on.

Pete

Honestly, I’m not sure. The trail of thought so far is that I want the whole apron of the bench to be a holding tool. So the left hand side will have a leg vice, and then if additional support is needed I can use a track clamp from the right, which is why I thought having the surface flush would be useful.

One of the many tasks I intend to use the bench for is trimming and replacing all of the doors in my house, and so I guess I wanted to be able to clamp a door to the side of the bench rested on a couple of dogs.

I’m thinking something similar to this:

 

[Jester129]

What you have is called a tandem garage.

 

[Luckosaurous]

What you have is called a tandem garage.

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