custard
Established Member
Finished the Moxon and here it is,
I used the Benchcrafted kit, but if I ever made another I'd cobble something together from bits and pieces. It's very straightforward to make (took about four or five hours including dimensioning and jointing the timber) and it makes dovetailing a breeze. Here's a quick trial dovetail I made using the Moxon, which knocked a good few minutes off my usual time,
Where I think I did go wrong was in being greedy and making the Moxon wide enough to accommodate a 24 1/2" workpiece. In reality I'm probably never going to make a dovetail that wide. If it had been sized for a 16" or 18" workpiece instead then it would have still been big enough for casework and would have left a lot more room on the bench for a shooting board and all the other dovetailing bits and pieces.
And while on the subject of benches here's the centre piece for my next bench,
It's a Record 52 1/2 that's been refurbished better than new, blueprinted, stove enamelled, and with a polished and chromed boss and tommy bar. It was an Ebay find and I thought it might look a bit too pimped, but in the flesh it's fairly subtle; more Aston Martin V8 rather than Ford Capri with a go fast stripe! Which is appropriate as the guy who did the work restores classic cars for a living. And it operates like silk, I've never known a Record vice work so sweetly. I'm thinking it needs to go on a very British bench, so maybe an oak Nicholson with two big hornbeam planing stops and no tail vice?
I used the Benchcrafted kit, but if I ever made another I'd cobble something together from bits and pieces. It's very straightforward to make (took about four or five hours including dimensioning and jointing the timber) and it makes dovetailing a breeze. Here's a quick trial dovetail I made using the Moxon, which knocked a good few minutes off my usual time,
Where I think I did go wrong was in being greedy and making the Moxon wide enough to accommodate a 24 1/2" workpiece. In reality I'm probably never going to make a dovetail that wide. If it had been sized for a 16" or 18" workpiece instead then it would have still been big enough for casework and would have left a lot more room on the bench for a shooting board and all the other dovetailing bits and pieces.
And while on the subject of benches here's the centre piece for my next bench,
It's a Record 52 1/2 that's been refurbished better than new, blueprinted, stove enamelled, and with a polished and chromed boss and tommy bar. It was an Ebay find and I thought it might look a bit too pimped, but in the flesh it's fairly subtle; more Aston Martin V8 rather than Ford Capri with a go fast stripe! Which is appropriate as the guy who did the work restores classic cars for a living. And it operates like silk, I've never known a Record vice work so sweetly. I'm thinking it needs to go on a very British bench, so maybe an oak Nicholson with two big hornbeam planing stops and no tail vice?
