Sliding Tail Vise

Over time and with increased use of hand tools, I enjoy creating jigs and tools to make the experience a better one. As a left-handed woodworker, I struggle with tools that are primarily designed for right-handed use. Regular bench planes are not an issue as they are symmetric in nature. When it comes to joinery and specialized hand planes however, the handedness is a little more critical. I have adapted for the most part but in some cases prefer a left-handed version of a tool as it feels more natural to me. In summary, I need to work on both sides of a workbench to accommodate either a left-handed or right-handed tool.

To overcome this, I developed this interesting workholding jig that plugs into the tail vise, in my case a twin screw vise, and serves to extend the operation of the vise over the workbench surface. Twin screw vises or end vises when used as tail vises, introduce a large gap between the moving jaw and the workbench surface. Another consequence is that the workpiece is hanging over the end of the workbench, not an ideal orientation for working with hand planes. The sliding tail vise emulates a real tail vise in its operation. Racking is also eliminated when clamping narrow boards through the four point system.

The sliding tail vise transfers clamping to the main workbench top. Inherent in its design ,it attaches through four points. Two fixed points in the outer jaw and two sliding points within slots. I can now quickly clamp a workpiece to the workbench surface through a wide bearing surface and if necessary lock it in place through two knurled bolts.

The sliding tail vise is also designed to be portable. I can easily use it on either side of my workbenches depending on the tool being used ( left or right hand orientation). I have also updated the design to work better with plow planes and the depth adjuster on this type of hand plane. This can be seen in the last image. So what began as a project to allow me to use the twin-screw vise to clamp on either side of a workbench, has turned out to be a really versatile clamping aid for an end vise or twin-screw vise regardless if you are left or right-handed.

Instructions and CAD diagrams are now available on how to create this sliding tail vise along with detailed plans. The plans are specific to Veritas workbenches, but easily adaptable to similar workbenches with either an end vise or twin screw vise. Plan available through www.woodskills.com

Workbench accessories...(Pt. 2)

After completing and successfully testing the portable board jack in the previous post, I decided to continue on with workbench workholding accessories. At this point, two clamping attachments came to mind. The first, an edge dog, alternatively known as a bench puppy, was modelled after a College Of The Redwoods derived design. This particular design was gained from a Timothy Coleman article on this type of workholding device, also derived from a College Of The Redwoods design.

A good example of how an edge dog can be used to hold a board on edge can be seen in the following image. One end is held by a edge dog whereas the other end is an add-on to a twin-screw vise which I discuss next. Instead of clamping a board to the surface of a workbench, the edge dog is used to clamp the board along the workbench edge and therefore at a more reasonable and lower height suitable for handplaning. Having a pair of these edge dogs allows either side of the workbench to be used. The edge dogs are created with opposing configurations as shown above.

My current workbenches do not incorporate dedicated tail vises. In place, I use a Veritas Twin-screw vise which performs as a tail vise when clamping boards on their face. When it comes to clamping boards on edge, the twin-screw vise can also be used along with bench dogs. The edge of the work piece would be then sitting on the workbench top. However, this raises the height of the board considerably and is not very conducive to jointing an edge of a board or handplaning. Ideally, the edge of a board should be slightly higher than the workbench surface to effectively perform hand plane operations. With this in mind, I created this outboard add-on to the twin-screw vise which extends the width of the vise movable jaw past the edge of the workbench.

Shown above, this newly designed outboard add-on accessory is an addition to the twin-screw movable jaw. In effect, the twin screw vise now becomes an enhanced tail vise capable of clamping boards on edge along the side of a workbench. The clamping is done in conjunction with the previously mentioned edge dog. Images of a board being clamped between these two accessories are shown below.

In these photos I am jointing the edge of a white ash board. I was surprised at how tightly the board is clamped with minimal tension applied to the twin screw vise. The friction from the leather pads contribute to this as slightly more tension was necessary before applying the leather pads. The outboard extension to the twin-screw vise is removable and can be adapted to either side of the twin-screw vise. I am left-handed so having it located to the right of the vise as shown, is more practical. For right-handed use, the opposite edge of the workbench would be used for jointing. As an added bonus, there is no racking of the twin-screw vise regardless of the clamping pressure I apply to the outboard extension.