Vise or Vice, Can you have enough

      What is a bench without a vise, well I think that many people use a bench successfully without a vice installed. 


This is not one of those benches, and it will have 2 primary vises.  


The tail vise that we installed in the last segment, needed a chop.  So I laminated together some soft maple offcuts and squared it all up for a nice thick chop.

     While the tail vise is great for clamping work between bench dogs, nothing beats the massive bite of a leg vise for holding a board flat against the front of the bench.  I have to say that the leg vise concept is pretty foreign to me.  Most benches I had seen previous to reading Schwarz' Workbench book had a common iron face vise or even a Twin screw of some sort.

This vise was no easy feat to install and I learned some things the hard way.


With both vises installed all the basic features of the bench are complete, now we can talk accessories!

Well I had one accessory that I could not do with and that was an "over-the-bench tool rack" as Schwarz likes to put it.  I think this is a brilliant dead simple way to pack tools within hands reach.

There is plenty of space on this rack for more tools,

I think foremost on the list are :

1. Sliding Leg vise - this seems like a right powerful addition to its permanent sibling.

2. Shelf - seems like this might be a bit less useful with the sliding leg vise but I will take any space I can get.

3. Planing Stops, Bench Hooks, and other appliances