Not much work over the past week due to one thing and another. The builders are turning up tomorrow to start ripping conifer fence out and putting a dry stone wall in, so we spent the whole of last weekend getting the garden ready and removing raised beds where the new shed is going to go.
On the brighter side, the vises turned up yesterday. 2-3 weeks for delivery turned into 12, but they certainly seem to be worth the wait. Although they were expensive, they are still a lot cheaper than importing Benchcraft vises which seem to be the only equivalent.
My daughter's first words when she saw the wooden vise screw and nut was: "Are you sure that's not Thor's hammer?!?"
My wife's comment was: "they are beautifully finished for something that will be hidden inside the bench."
The screw is about 3" wide and about 2' long. The nut itself is 3"x3.5"x8". I no longer feel that I have over engineered the legs at 6"x6"
The garter is glass smooth. I may at some point in the future replace the handle and end caps with an ash handle and cherry end caps, but for the moment I am looking to get the top finished as soon as possible.
The wagon vise is a thing of beauty. It has nearly 18" of travel and the table slides along the rails very smoothly. Again, at some point after this is all finished I may well replace the walnut handle with a cherry one to match the rest of the bench.
Now that I have seen the vise in the flesh, I have decided that I will indeed 2 planks in front of the dog holes as the handle is slightly offset to the right (the front as it will be on my bench). This will put the dog holes a little further back from the front of the bench than I would like. This will put them about 120mm from the front of the bench to the centre of the dog hole. Having a quick play with a plane and holding a work piece down with a clamp at this point, it seems to be ok.
