It took me a long time to learn that the firmer you can hold something, the easier it is to get to a happy ending!
We moved house half a dozen times when I was growing up, and each time the first thing my father would do would be to build a sturdy workbench from scrap timber, and bolt this engineers’ vice to it. I admit I have a lot of sentimental attachment to this poor old thing - I can’t count the number of times I cut myself or took bits of skin off or flattened a thumb trying to make something with it as my only witness.
It’s my go-to, when something needs bashing or cutting or bending, and I’ve had the use of it for the best part of 75 years! .
Beside the bench on which that one is mounted is my drill press, which has this little thing attached. It doesn’t always get used on the drill press - sometimes it’s handy to take and use on a table, or even bolt onto a lump of timber if the problem needs that kind of solution.
For woodworking specifically cabinet and luthery work holding, I built what was billed as “the ultimate workbench” in the days when one relied on magazines for information. It uses the bits of four pipe clamps to make it generally a one size fits all solution, but the reality is that I haven’t used the longitudinal clamps in fifteen years, and it’s easy enough to screw or clamp a temporary hold down solution with wedges. Similarly the face vice has rarely been used because it’s easier to clamp vertical pieces to the face, resting on the movable support.
That support is a genius thing - so it’s staying and gets used more often than I can to think. If it’s not obvious from the photos, it adjusts by using the “back” fitting of a pipe clamp at each end.
I’m currently modifying this bench - more on that later.
That bench is so nice I would be scared to work on it!
I have two harbor freight vices. One is the drill press vice, looks just like yours. I am not sure I have ever used it on the drill press. The other is a regular $60 HF vice that came with the house, about 6 months after owning my new house the previous owner came and asked for it back. I had a few issue with him so I just told him it was gone so he would leave as quickly as possible. The nice thing about a cheap vice is I can beat the snot out of it and not be too worried about breaking it. The kids used to crush rocks with the bigger one and I had no issues with it.
Yes. I have a few. I have a huge 8” mounted to the end of a bench. I also have a small clamp-on vice that was my grandfather’s it gets moved around the shop as needed. Then there’s the few vices for the mill.
A bench is just another kind of special purpose tool, so IMHO hat’s like having a nice chisel and being scared to use it - just don’t use it to open paint cans! Those photos were taken when it was new of course, it’s made of recovered demolition timber and MDF, and painted with clear, which is my go-to cover up for woodwork!
My father used to say that building stuff in clear finished timber was the ultimate display of workmanship. I bet to differ - all that grain makes you feel warm and fuzzy and covers a multitude of sins!
Anyway, back to the bench - it’s my outfeed/assembly/paint/glue and fix things on table so it’s now well used, but still in pretty good shape - more pics in a day or two when I get the woodwork vice installed on it.
I am not sure if this is a bench or a vice, but for really thrashing a table - this is my favourite tool. Made of cheap pine studs, it looks odd because it doesn’t have a top, but that’s the point. It’s a sacrificial platform for cutting ply or anything else, clamping for routing, painting etc. The top will never be true, but it’s good enough, and you can hold anything to it in any direction so perhaps it’s a vice.
It folds and clips against a wall when not in use, so we can park the car inside, and it’s light enough to carry outdoors when really messy router work or carving is happening. (The shelf unit is the new garage car cleaning stuff shelf to tidy up those random bottles lined against the wall - almost completed!)
Speaking of benches, here’s a before and after of the bench that holds my Pattern Makers vice, which is my most used tool I think. For info on just some of what a Pattern Makers vice can do - watch this two minute clip.
Before - all my workshop furniture is from reclaimed timber. I needed some heft in the bench so it’s an 80mm 3 1/2" solid top - Douglas Fir because that’s what I salvaged out of a carport extension. Note top right in this photo an early iteration of the bench/table of the one in the post above.
Twenty years ago and six months, this is what the bench looked like with vice attached. Each part positioned during assembly to conceal any nail holes so that it looks like clear timber - I was just as mad then as I am now, so I can’t blame it on age.
Now, well it’s a bit unfair because I’m mid clean up, at the stage where it’s just got a lot worse before it gets better, but the vice is still completely accessible!
Am I the only one that just LOVES looking close at other’s workshops? Love see things similar and things different. I think because it’s such a comfort zone for me.
Wow! Thanks for the sharing. I did not know about the thread. Just spent a bit going through all of the post. Seems to have added some personality to each of the many familiar members. It seems one thing for sure we all like have fun in our spaces.
Finally got my little wood vice mounted today after fifteen years sitting on a bench! It belonged to my uncle, who was a pattern maker; an Australian made Carter brand from somewhere “between the wars” so we can safely say it’s around 100 years old.
It had a few mm of backlash and the installation is significantly more complex than it looks, but it’s ready to go again now.
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