Under the Choko Tree By Nevin Sweeney

Installing a Woodworking Vise

The type of vise mostly used for metalworking  -the engineers vise – is a very simple vise to install, just bolt it down to the bench where you want it to go, but the woodworking vise is a bit more complicated because it is mounted on the front of the bench. The following method shows how I mounted the vise on the bench which I made for our garage and for which, construction details are covered in another article on this site.

First get your vise

I got hold of a couple of small second hand vises from the Saturday paddy’s market in Flemington (Sydney), they were both steel (I also have an aluminium one) are quite robust and comparatively economically priced. If you are going to get hold of a woodworking vise a steel one that can be fixed correctly to the front of the bench is best. I used to have one that had a screw thread underneath and screwed onto the top of the bench and it wasn’t so much economical as CHEAP and totally unsuited to the purpose of woodworking. As with all tools, if you go for a more expensive unit in most cases it will be an investment rather than a cost.

Woodworking Vise

The bench that I am going to install the vise into is the one I made recently for our garage, and is covered in another article.

Deciding where to put it!

The vise needs to be installed so that the top of the jaws is more or less level with the top of the bench and you should make sure that where you are going to site it has enough clearance on either side to allow you to hold long work without fouling any obstructions. It is intensely frustrating to be half way through a job and find that you can go any further because the job is too long to fit in the vise where it is.

Installing the vise

Messy, ain't it?

Due to the construction method of my bench I had to remove the front rail and put a cut-away into it to allow the vise to sit at the right height. Having measured up the back of the vise and marked out where the cut out was to go, I unscrewed the front rail to work on it. (another good reason to use screws rather than nails and glue!). I clamped it another vise on an existing bench and then cut in the required depth using a hand saw then, to remove the waste wood I used a 25mm wide chisel and mallet to cut through the wood along the grain. The finish is a bit rough, but does the job.

I told you it was a bit rough!

To mount the vise at the right height I had to cut and fix a 20mm thick block behind the front rail, secured to the underside of the top surface of the bench by four screws run down through the top surface and down into the block. Once that was done I could replace the front rail and then fit the vise by drilling and screwing in four squat coach screws through the mounting holes provided in the vise and into the block mounted behind the front rail.

Mounting Block Screwed into Place

Installing the soft jaws

So now the vise was essentially installed the only thing to do was cut and fit the soft jaw covers on the inside of the vise jaws, this is to ensure that the wooden work piece being secured by the vise is not damaged by the metal jaws. In most cases these will not be in place when you buy your woodworking vise so you will need to cut and fit them yourself. The best material for the soft jaws is plywood, which is a good trade off between acting as a cushion but having the strength needed to hold the work as required.

The vise installed without soft jaws

There should be two holed is in each of the metal jaws with the outside surface being countersunk to accept a countersunk screw head. Unfortunately the small vise I got did not have countersunk holes so to secure the back jaw I drilled and countersunk the front face and then put in screws through the jaw and into the timber of the bench behind.  I believe this will work OK for us but this IS NOT the recommended way of fixing the soft jaws, the screws should be installed from the other side and only be so long as they do not penetrate through the surface of the soft jaw. I got hold of some short screws with a large flat head and then screwed them through the front of the vise and into the inside surface of the jaw.

Vice complete with soft jaws

With the installation of the soft jaws the vise is now in place and ready for use!

One word of warning, never leave any vise with the jaws screwed in hard together for any length of time as expansion and contraction of the metal due to temperature changes can damage the nut that the large screw turns through to tighten of loosen the vise.

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