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This is the last post on Joseph Moxon’s double-screw vise. Promise.
Wednesday morning while I was in the shower, my brain clicked. (Hey! twice in one month!) On Tuesday, Glen Huey and I were discussing how to make a double-screw vise without a wood-threading kit. He suggested bolts. I suggested pipe clamps. We left it at that.
Then, at 5:15 a.m., the lukewarm water of our shower brought on this idea: F-style clamps. Everyone has them. So I scurried off to work and immediately began fussing with some poplar at my bench. I had a rear jaw and chop already prepared for threading. The holes were drilled, and the blank for the handles was waiting on the lathe.
Instead I took the poplar parts to the table saw and milled a 1/4″-wide groove in the ends of the rear jaw and the chop. Each groove intersected a hole and was just wide enough to accept the bar of an F-style clamp.
I slid two short F-style-clamps into the grooves and filled in the grooves with some poplar scraps (purple poplar , my personal favorite).
Does this vise work? Heck yes. And later that day Glen and Robert Lang and I came up with some other ways we could do this without permanently installing the F-style clamps. (However, I prefer it this way.)
The best thing was that making this twin-screw vise took , at most , 30 minutes.
Perhaps I should shower more often.
– Christopher Schwarz
Other Workbench Resources You Might Enjoy
– “Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use.” Now in its third printing.
– “The Best of Shops & Workbenches” CD from Popular Woodworking.
– “The Workbench: How to Design or Modify a Bench for Efficient Use DVD” from Lie-Nielsen Toolworks
