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This weekend I’m installing the Benchcrafted.com wagon vise hardware on my Roubo-style workbench. But before I could pull my old prototype wagon vise hardware off the bench, I had one more task for it to perform: Making the new end cap for the new wagon vise.
The new end cap on my benchtop has to be beefier than my original end cap, so I had to glue up some 8/4 maple into a slab about 3″ thick. I planed it all flat using my old wagon vise, glued up the slab and then decommissioned the vise.
The new Benchcrafted wagon vise requires you to cut a curved cavity on the underside of the bench to accommodate the vise’s guts. I hogged out most of the waste with a plunge router and a long straight bit. Then I cut off some of the excess waste with my tenon saw and shaped the cavity’s curve with an outcannel gouge used bevel-down.
Of course, the new vise’s guide rails are going to have to go right where I have a big void in one board thanks to a waney edge. I’m going to have to cut out the wane and patch it with some solid yellow pine for two reasons: One, it will make for a neater job all-in-all. And two, after seeing dozens of people climb underneath my bench at the Woodworking in America conference, I now know that there is no such thing as a secondary surface on this bench.
– Christopher Schwarz
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