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Many readers were interested in Bill Liebold’s sliding leg vise, which he installed on his Roubo-meets-Dominy-style workbench (I’m just going to call this form the “Bill Bench” from here out).
Liebold liked the sliding aspect of the leg vise because when you used it in tandem with a fixed leg vise, you could clamp just about anything. Need to dovetail a 24″-wide case side? That’s child’s play for this set-up. How about planing an entryway door? Just as easy.
This sliding leg vise arrangement was shown in a plate in Andre Roubo’s 18th century treatise on woodworking, but I’ve never seen one in the wild on an old bench. Perhaps that’s because there is a weakness to the original design (or my employer is not funding enough trips to France for me). Liebold said the pressure applied by the screw could bow the front edge of the bench out. This occurred because the vise runs in a track on the underside of the benchtop. When hard pressure was applied, the tongue that rides in the track would push out in some cases, bowing the front of the bench.
Liebold, however, has now fixed that problem. The solution? Steel.
“Well, I just had to make my sliding leg vice work in a permanent way so I wouldn’t have to worry about it breaking,” Liebold writes. He lined the track with steel (you can get this from a home center).
So how does it work?
“Now the weakest part of the vice is the parallel guide,” Liebold writes. “I cinched down on a piece of basswood until I could hear wood starting to crackle. I was able to dent the basswood and I bent the brass pin in the parallel guide. Success!”
– Christopher Schwarz
