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Bench Reconfiguration Diary


Si600

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Lawks, if it ain't clear by now I have no clue what I'm doing...

Right, what I'm doing is building a leg vice on my bench. There's a picture of one somewhere back in the darkness of the thread.

Leg vices need some way if keeping the moving bit, called the chop for some reason, parallel to the leg, otherwise if you put a deep bit of stock or work in it it only grips at the bottom edge.

The usual, and easy, way is to have a sliding beam attached to the bottom of the chop wit a series of holes drilled in it. You adjust the amount of stand off by putting a peg in the hole closest to the thickness of the work.

Somewhere around 1900 a mechanism was described, called erroneously a St. Peter's cross, in a book. Presumably it was reasonably common for the author to have heard of it.

The scissor mechanism has advantages over the peg board because it's self adjusting to the exact width of the work in the vice and you don't have to bend down to move the peg around. It's more work to fit and fettle.

I had to build a new bench leg as well as the vice chop itself. It's 90% there, it needs planing tidying and final fix followed fettling to make it work.

Does that help

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6 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Sensible handle?

Handle can wait.

What's happened is that I made the scissor mechanism symmetrical. The hole in the top that it hangs from is in the middle of the square bar and it pivots around it's center. This means that the ends that run in the channels are about 5mm too short so that the gap at the bottom of the chop is around 10mm than the top.

I've got three options I think. Weld a lump on the end of the bar to thicken it up, making the end look like a b shape if you will. Bolt a pair of bearings onto each end of the scissor that are 5mm wider than the bar. Bend the bar, or option four, pack out the base of the channel with a strip of wood.

I'm going to try option four, it has the added advantage of smoothing out the surface of the channel after I didn't cut it out very well.

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1 hour ago, Si600 said:

Lawks, if it ain't clear by now I have no clue what I'm doing...

Right, what I'm doing is building a leg vice on my bench. There's a picture of one somewhere back in the darkness of the thread.

Leg vices need some way if keeping the moving bit, called the chop for some reason, parallel to the leg, otherwise if you put a deep bit of stock or work in it it only grips at the bottom edge.

The usual, and easy, way is to have a sliding beam attached to the bottom of the chop wit a series of holes drilled in it. You adjust the amount of stand off by putting a peg in the hole closest to the thickness of the work.

Somewhere around 1900 a mechanism was described, called erroneously a St. Peter's cross, in a book. Presumably it was reasonably common for the author to have heard of it.

The scissor mechanism has advantages over the peg board because it's self adjusting to the exact width of the work in the vice and you don't have to bend down to move the peg around. It's more work to fit and fettle.

I had to build a new bench leg as well as the vice chop itself. It's 90% there, it needs planing tidying and final fix followed fettling to make it work.

Does that help

Partly.

Some kind of a long woodworking vice that's fixed to your bench then.

And the metalworking vice that appears in your pictures has nothing to do with it.

(I like your pillar drill BTW).

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22 minutes ago, Ricky 4000 said:

Partly.

It's a start ;)

 

22 minutes ago, Ricky 4000 said:

Some kind of a long woodworking vice that's fixed to your bench then.

Yes. :)

22 minutes ago, Ricky 4000 said:

And the metalworking vice that appears in your pictures has nothing to do with it.

No. :)

24 minutes ago, Ricky 4000 said:

(I like your pillar drill BTW).

Thank you. IIRC it's an Eliot Progress, could be from anytime between the 50's to the early 70's according to Google.

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Meaning it's just an engineers vice that happens to be attached to my bench. It's only purpose in the woodworking vice is that I've used it to hold various bits of the new vice whilst I do things to them

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16 hours ago, Si600 said:

Riiiiiiight. So.

I took the clamps off it this afternoon and offered it up just because I was a little bit squeee about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Well. It was too long, which I knew. So I lopped the end off and hung the chop on the scissor doohickey to see what happened.

Holy Instant Saint Maker Batman (see DoI thread, if you dare, for context ;))! It looks like it's going to work. I was about 90% sure that it would though.

It needs a bit (lot) of tidying with a plane, and the screw fitting and probably fettling, but I present to you a (mostly) finished leg vice.

IMG_20200629_171737.jpg

IMG_20200629_171758.jpg

IMG_20200629_171822.jpg

IMG_20200629_171811.jpg

Looking good si, nice job, I’ve got the bench vices on my one, which don’t go as wide as yours , it’s a bit messy at the moment as I’m having a sort out 🙂

D711F1B3-E8F3-42A9-8A92-65AB5E7BC3E8.jpeg

17FAE132-AF57-46A4-9F49-823EEC3E6F40.jpeg

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4 minutes ago, Reggaebass said:

Looks like we have  have a similar pillar drills Luke 

nutool or something., made in Doncaster I think... but someones stuck a new 240v motor on the back. I needed to drill 30 really accurate holes in a banister - at the time I only had a plug in SDS drill so the argument was that buying that pillar drill for £75 or whatever was worth it as it would still be worth that much when I didn't need it. It's nice though! Putting it in the car was fun, we put the stand in first so it was just behind the drivers seat - hadn't considered the fact that that left most the weight hanging off behind the rear axle ... a very odd drive accross Bradford ensued. 

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The BC Swear Aunty won't let me post what I actually said. 

Nearly there. So I'm happily planing the top of the chop level and chamfering the back edge to make it look nice and less chunky.

You all know what's coming next. Yup, I started on the wrong side and took the corner off the fore edge.

IMG_20200703_104126.jpg

Pretty much did the only thing possible in the circumstances.

IMG_20200703_110610.jpg

IMG_20200703_111450.jpg

This is what I wanted to do.

IMG_20200703_105038.jpg

Edited by Si600
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Bu$$er off you. I'm already a rebate plane extra... :on_the_quiet:

I'm using the bench edging as a planing stop at the moment, but that sliding doohickey does look a nice idea. Dimensions please 🤔

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2 hours ago, Si600 said:

IMG_20200703_111450.jpg

But now it looks like you have very carefully thought ahead and made the top section of the fore edge deliberately replaceable so that when it gets damaged you won't have to replace the entire structure, just that one piece of wood.  "Designed for repair and maintainability"
Very clever and advanced thinking 👍

Edited by Richard R
I seem to have pasted my reply inside the box I was quoting. And I can't now move it out.
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16 minutes ago, Richard R said:

 

Er, yes. That's exactly what I was thinking. Ignore the bits where I admit to a mistake. In fact, ignore all of those comments. This has gone together with absolutely no problems whatsoever.

🤥

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