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I started making the wooden vise chop for a new leg vise for my Holtzapffel workbench (featured in “The Workbench Design Book”) using some crazy new hardware from Benchcrafted: the Classic vise screw and the Crisscross.
The only downside to the Crisscross part of the assembly is that you need a vise chop that is quite thick – 3” is a good thickness. I don’t have any maple in my shop that thick, so I laminated the vise chop from two 1-3/4”-thick slabs of soft maple.
I prefer soft maple (whenever possible) because it’s cheaper, easier to work and (in my experience) more likely to be figured. Plus, few people can tell the difference between soft and hard maple. They are both plenty hard.
After laminating up my chop, however, I realized I’d made an error. I used hide glue to laminate the chop instead of yellow glue. The problem is that I have a SawStop, which has flesh-detecting technology. Even when hide glue is fully cured, it sets off the Saw Stop. It’s like having a little layer of hot dog inside.*
So I’ll have to finish shaping the chop with a handsaw or a band saw.
— Christopher Schwarz
* This is a total lie. It’s actually like having a layer of horsemeat inside your lignum. Wait. Aren’t hot dogs horsemeat? And fly parts? I forget. Oh, and hide glue doesn’t set off your SawStop, either.
