You don't need a vise on the Joiner's Bench

so last week I put out my quick compact version of the traditional English joiner Spanish and the response has been huge it is already one of my most popular videos ever and a lot of people have gotten in touch to say here X that's a great bench but what kind of vise are you gonna put on it a leg by some oxen vise face vise you know it's not really gonna be complete until there's a vise you know my response to that is well what if we just didn't put a vise on at all I'm a vise guy if I were gonna cut a joint into this piece of wood I'd put it in a vise and then I just go to work on it with the saw I used the vise for almost every woodworking operation but what if I were starting over again and I didn't have the money for a big high-quality vise like this one what would I do then well I'd start by watching Mike seam since outstanding video on vise 'less or : mike has an English bench that's very similar to mine and he's built in some great work holding devices for instance Mike built this long adjustable stop into the middle of his bench and this adjustable hook that slides in and out of the apron and holds board's perpendicular to the bench top it all works really well but I didn't build any of that stuff into my bench design so if I want to use this bench without a vise I'm gonna have to adapt what's already here now something did I do a lot of in my wood work is just planing the faces of boards and if I just take a board and put it flat on the bench top it's already held pretty well it's supported on its whole length and it's helped nice and flat all that really need is something over here to keep the board from shooting off the end of the bench while I'm working on it historically a lot of woodworkers did this with a planing stop which can just be a block of wood but even more commonly woodworkers used a tooth to stop that could really bite into the work and just recently the guys at benchcrafted came out with this slick little job which holds like crazy and costs only thirty bucks you should totally just buy the bench craft version if you have the money I have no affiliation with them and I get nothing if you buy it but I still think you should of course this is me so I'm also gonna show you how to build your own with about 10 bucks worth of spare parts from the big-box store we'll start with half of this six inch strap hinge what did I do with the other half I used it to make this toy cake server which my daughter uses to serve this toy cake she's six we have a lot of tea parties with the hinge clamped to my bench top I can hacksaw off the parts I don't need and get a square edge for cleaning up I like this Nicholson handy file it's got a built-in handle and two different sets of teeth I'll put a link to it down in the description with everything else from this build now I've got my piece clamped up right to the apron and I'm hack sawing a little notch every quarter inch those notches give me a starting place for filing the teeth these Tecton triangular files aren't super high quality but they are cheap and they come with a comfortable plastic handle I'm removing a lot of material here and any file I use is gonna get pretty worn out I like to use an inexpensive file for this kind of course work you can just file straight down deepening your notches until you get nice triangular teeth it only takes about 20 minutes then it's back to the flat file to bevel the underside of my teeth this feature forces the work down to the bench top while it's being planed and it gives the teeth more bite I also need to countersink the holes in my hinge so my mounting screws sit flush I can use a countersink bit in my brace or in a drill which is a lot faster now my hardware won't catch my tools as I'm working for the post of my stop I'm using this piece of cherry but any hard wood will do I'll trace the holes and use a square to run their locations down the side then I'll drill in from the side and down from the top which is a lot easier if you hold the brace horizontally and lean into it with your belly for extra drilling force drilling the end grain of hard wood is difficult and you need all the help you can get to mount my planing stop to my post I'm gonna use these little barrel nuts right here you find these in cheap hardware and you can also grab them down in the big box store they're very inexpensive these go sideways into the post and then my mounting screws come in from on top and screw into them this way it locks everything together the end grain of the post is kind of soft even in hardwood and grain just doesn't hold fastener very well this arrangement is gonna give me a rock-solid hold with my holes drilled I can drop in my barrel nuts then I thread my screws into the barrel nuts and my stop is done if you want to build this stop I have all my vise 'less workholding solutions in a single affordable set of plans and there's a link to those down in the description historically these stops from mortise into the bench top but my joiners bench is kind of small and I don't really have the real estate for that approach luckily I've worked out a mounting method that's gonna work perfectly with this bench first I'll pull the closest board off the bench top and sawed out a notch that fits the post of my stop then I'll drill some closely spaced mounting holes in the post and clear out the waste between them with a chisel the post can then be lagged bolted to the leg of the bench and come right up through that notch in the top now this mounting method works but I was hoping that the lag bolts would slide in those slots instead they're just bending and I don't have much range of motion so I made this little hardwood spacer that I can add between the washers and the post that spacer keeps the bolts from bending and allows them to slide more easily now I have the full range of motion on my stop and I'm not stressing my hardware every time I adjust it you might see the planing stop and think that it's going to be difficult to use or have a steep learning curve but right now you're watching footage of me using a stop for the second time in my life and it's a piece of cake you can give your stock a little mallet tap to help the teeth bite down and it's a very efficient method of stock prep if you need to flip the board or rotate it it's easy because the work isn't held down if you're doing a stack of boards this method will be especially quick and you can see my final surface is perfect now the planing stop can handle a lot of tasks it will let you work on the faces and edges of medium sized boards especially for planning but what about chiseling for that we're gonna need a bit more Hardware this is called a holdfast you've probably seen them before but they're basically a clamp that fits into a hole in your bench top you hit them on top to seat them and then you hit them on the back to make them release with a holdfast I can quickly clamp any piece of stock down to my bench top and chisel any part of it the ones I have here are made by Gramercy Tool Works they cost $38 for a set of two and you just can't beat them for the price I don't get anything when you buy these and I still recommend them very highly your holdfasts can also work with your planing stop for instance you often need to plain work across the face instead of along it especially for heavy stock removal the planing stop by itself won't let you do this but you can combine the planing stop with a dose foot which is just a thin piece of wood with a right angle cut out of the end when I combine my planing stop with the dough's foot on the opposite corner my stock is held very securely and it's easy to work across the grain even with really aggressive strokes another place where you're planing stop needs help is with very wide stock the stop is too narrow for big planks but this is no problem I can just put a baton against my planning stop hold the far end with a holdfast and then plain wood that's as wide as my bench top now I know what you're saying Rex those holdfasts are great but they're not quite in the budget right this second and I still want to use that baton trick for planing wide boards don't you have some little gizmo that I could make out of random junk for basically no money well as a matter of fact I do you'll need a scrap of dowel a little piece of pipe a screw and a big washer I had all this stuff laying around my shop and the copper pipe just came out of the garbage I'll tape around the dowel to give myself a line saw a little shoulder all the way around and then paired down to my shoulder with a sharp chisel I've got a tight fit and I can bang on a piece of copper pipe which is going to keep the dowel from splitting when I drill the end and add my screw and washer I'll drill a big countersink in my bench and then drill a 7/8 hole for my dowel my new stop sits under the bench top where it won't scratch my work I can tap the stop up slide my baton underneath it and then tap it down to trap the batten under the washer now I can still play me be wide boards even without a holdfast and there are some other places where the planing stop won't do everything it does the edges of narrow boards but for edge planing wide boards there isn't enough support to keep things balanced to fix this problem we need a crochet it's just a hook made out of hardwood I made this one entirely with hand tools and I have all the details in my low bench series I'll link to that in the description and the cards you can see that the end is drilled and there are washers in the holes this crochet is easy to just bolt to the leg of my bench and also drill some holes in my apron and these will hold pegs or holdfasts to support work in the crochet my crochet has a long narrow taper and it really grips the ends of boards while the pegs support the weight and the board is held really nicely for edge planning no vise necessary at this point we've done most operations except for sawing I prefer to saw on my low bench it's a lot easier and more ergonomic but you can easily use a holdfast to grip a board while you crosscut or rip it just hang the board over the edge of the bench but what about sawing joinery I mean that's the very first thing I did in this video can I work on the ends of boards effectively with this bench sure I can for a narrow board I'll use a pair of holdfasts in the apron of my bench grip the stock high and low and you'll have a great hold for sewing joinery for a wide board jam it in the crochet and add holdfast then you can cut dovetails or anything else you want so ever since I came out with this design people have been getting in touch and saying Rex I've liked your bench a lot but I'm worried about that top isn't that thin planking gonna be too little to really grip a hold fast and I was a little concerned about that too but I shouldn't have been here's a piece of the planking that I used for the top and I've put in a holdfast and it's holding beautifully turns out an inch and a half of material is plenty with these gramercy holdfasts that's not the whole story the holdfasts are gripped okay by the top but the holes are already starting to become distorted when you use a holdfast with a thin top like this it grips okay but the angle is too much and it's crushing a lot of those fibres in there what we need to do is make this top little bit thicker just where the holdfasts are luckily I've got plenty of this material left over from building the bench so I'm gonna pull off a couple of boards glue on small pieces of blocking right underneath the holes that I've already drilled replace the boards drill all the way through those blocks with my bitten brace and then I can pound in a holdfast and not only will it hold really securely but the holes aren't breaking down at all I expect to be able to use this top with the hold fast for years you know it's really common for people to get a hold of me and say hey Rex I found this little woodworking advice on Amazon it's cheap and it gets great reviews do you think I should get one and honestly I don't small vices are just not very useful for woodworking they won't handle big stock it won't handle long stock and they're not very good at holding boards perpendicular so that you can cut joinery on the ends I am all about cheap tools but when you're doing wood work if you have the choice between cheap vice and no vice you're honestly better off with no vice especially when you think about the cost of adding just a couple of iceless options to your bench you can get a pair of holdfasts and then build a planing stop and a crochet and a couple other things and your whole cost for all of that stuff is gonna be fifty fifty five dollars that brings the total cost for this bench with all these appliances up to about a hundred and fifty bucks and that's just not a lot of money for a bench that will handle pretty much any woodworking operation and if you want to add these things to your bench I have a really great set of plants with everything in it it's got the crochet the planing stop it's got the batten stop it's got the locations for all of my holdfast holes and all the places that I added blocking and that set plans is only five bucks if you want to pick that up going over to rex krueger comm slash store or click the link down in the description and of course my patrons never have to worry about how much plans cost because they get all of my plans for free they also get early access to all of my videos exclusive content and a bunch of other extras if you'd like to see about the rewards that I offer for the people who make this channel possible go to patreon calm / Rex Krueger and check out all the things I do for the supporters of this channel none of this could happen without them in making a video like this it's inevitable people are gonna ask me hey do you like working on a Vice less bench and the answer is not really I think priceless benches are great if you're broke or if you're trying to recreate a particular period in woodworking history but for regular day-to-day projects nothing beats the ease and convenience and solid hold of a good vice I think that's why they're so popular now I'm not gonna change anything that I've done to this bench I'm gonna leave on the planing stop and I'm gonna keep using holdfasts I'm just gonna take off the crochet in its place I am going to build a big robust vise and I'm gonna make it out of common materials off the internet and from the home center and it's going to be fantastic and I can say that even though I haven't built it yet and I only have sort of a vague idea of what its gonna look like but I still think it's gonna be awesome so you should come back and join me next week as I put the finishing touches on our completed joiners bench thanks so much for watching I'll see you next week

Channel: Rex Krueger

Views: 308,688

Rating: 4.9505301 out of 5

Keywords: vise, woodworking, woodworking bench, woodworking vise, how to build a workbench, bench, workbench, woodworking bench vise, work bench, how to make a vise, how to install bench vise, installing a vise, how to install a vise, how to make a work bench, diy vise, making a woodworking bench, how to make a woodworking bench, making a vise, diy bench vise, woodshop

Id: kzv27STMnvY

Length: 14min 28sec (868 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 12 2020