Workbench & Record 53E - Overhang?

[xraymtb]

About to start building a new bench and planning to fit a Record 53E vice once complete (the big one - 270mm wide).

The bench is only going to be 6ft long. Issue I'm having is where to put the leg in relation to the vice. I need an overhang of at least 270mm plus any extra width I want from the wooden jaws. The other way (leg outside the vice) means the edge of the vice being at least 150mm from the end (125mm leg plus a very small edge).

As the bench is only 6ft I don't want to end up with the vice feeling too close to the middle and a leg looks bizarre being right on the edge...but on the other hand how much overhang can I have?

Related note - how big a jaw? Was thinking of 400mm or so?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

'Scuse the poor pic. My bench is under six feet long, and mine's inboard of the leg. The bench is a little oddly designed, as there is no apron and the top rail is dropped to allow all round access to the top and maintain the full strength of the rail (before someone comments ). It has given me no reason to wish I'd done differently.

 

[John15]

I have a short bench, just 5' long, with my vice inside the leg and the top running past the leg by 50mm. I find this layout works well for me and looks OK too.

John

 

[JJ1]

I faced exactly the same dilemma a while back when I made my first bench. The following image should give you an indication of my vice placement (also a Record No 53) and also the size of the jaws. It's now been used extensively and I've had no issues whatsoever with the placement or size of the vice jaws. Hope this helps.

https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/download/file.php?id=41553&mode=view

 

[MarkDennehy]

I have a 53A rather than an E, and a 5-foot bench rather than a 6-foot one but I put mine just inside the front left leg (I was thinking of the back left, but that seemed awkward).

It's a lot easier to fit the vice - one complicated looking mortice in the benchtop and one very simple hole in the apron.

Make sure your bench is wide enough - mine is only barely an inch wide enough for the vice bars - any narrower and I'd have needed a hole in the back apron too.
I still get a full 12" in the vice even with the wooden jaws though. I can actually clamp myself in my own vice. Totally worth it.

 

[xraymtb]

Thanks everyone, looks like either option works.

I think I will go for it outside the leg, my stretcher is rough cut to around 44" meaning if I put it inside the leg I either have the vice quite a way in from the end or I just end up with a huge overhang on the right hand side instead!

 

[custard]

I've seen benches with asymmetric overhangs, so the overhang on the left is wider than the one one right to accommodate the vice.

They don't look as daft as you might expect, the bench itself isn't symmetrical (because there's only a vice at one end), so visually it integrates the vice into the overall structure and makes it look more purposeful.

One other thought. If it's a Nicholson style bench the overhangs at both ends are ideal to contain shelves or drawers for tool storage, but to maximise that space you need the vice inboard of the legs. One of the best benches I ever worked at had two open shelves behind the apron on the left hand side, they were perfect for sliding your bench plane onto and in fact were the right size to hold all the tools you generally need for any particular task, so you could keep the bench surface tool free and (unlike tool trays) these shelves never became full of shavings.

 

[custard]

Related note - how big a jaw? Was thinking of 400mm or so?

Depends what you do. Personally I find a decent jaw width mainly useful for dovetailing, where you want all or most of a drawers width to be securely held when the drawer front or sides are positioned vertically in the vice. I've known craftsmen who use the top surface of the vice pads as reference surfaces for routing, so they generally want wide jaws. But apart from circumstances like these wider jaws increase the risk of racking, which is the number one problem for most vice designs.