Yea!, My new Benchcrafted Classic Leg Vise is in. Unfortunately they must have run out of the unfinished vises, I am still very happy with this vise. The machining on their vise hardware is amazing. They are the best you can get…period!
Now to build a leg to put it in. Should be able to build a couple on Friday.
-Aaron
This entry was posted on October 21, 2015
This is a project that is way overdue. I’ve been working with my lightweight commercial workbench for way too many years. Last Friday I purchased 10 beautiful 5/4 x 5″ x 12′ boards of southern yellow Pine. I had already purchased my Benchcrafted tail vice about a year and a half ago. This tail vise is quite an expensive piece of machinery to have just laying around not earning it’s keep. So I have decided to go ahead and build my very own Roubo Workbench. In these pictures you’ll see the boards have already been cut in half and resting nicely on my two saw benches. I will be following Chris Schwarz’s plans for a 18th century Roubo workbench, modified as to fit incorporate my Benchcrafted tail vise. The finished Bench top should be 5″ thick, 20″ wide and 72″ long. This is going to be one heavy workbench. The overall workbench dimensions will be H 34″ x W 20″ X L 72″. I am using Chris Schwarz’s book “Workbenches - From Design & Theory to Construction & Use” as my primary source for plans and instructions. I also have Chris’s other workbench book “The Workbench Design Book - The Art and Philosophy of Building Better Benches”. He has republished his “Workbenches” book and it is available on his website at Lost Art Press.
Some of you may remember the Saw Box I started in this post -> Have Saw Will Travel . In preparation for finishing my chair I made in the “Continuous Arm Windsor Chair Class” at Elia Bizzarri’s, I wanted to get some more practice with the finishing techniques that I will use in the chair so I decided to finish my Saw Box.
The process goes like this:
The completed machine - what a beauty!
You may recall from my previous post, that my half-finished spring pole lathe had become a temporary “bookshelf” due to an injury. Now, oh happy day, it has been repurposed into a functioning lathe! This project, by far, was one of the most difficult I have undertaken. I don’t mean technically difficult, but physically difficult. But let me say up front that it did not have to be this way. Sometimes, we work against ourselves and are our own worst enemy.
