Workbench (woodworking)

Probably the oldest and most basic method of holding the work is a planing stop or dog ear, which is simply a peg or small piece of wood or metal that stands just above the surface at the end of the bench top. The work is placed on the bench with the end pushed against the stop. The force of the planing keeps the board in place, so long as the force is always toward the stop. Planing against a stop gives the woodworker good feedback - they can tell a lot about what is going on just by the pressure, force and balance required. A stop can take the form of a batten attached to the end of the bench, or it can be adjustable, able to be moved up and down according to the size of the work - or pushed down below the surface when not needed. A simple bench dog can serve as a planing stop.

Another ancient method of holding the work is the holdfast. A holdfast looks like a shepherd's crook. The shank goes into a hole in the bench top and the tip of the hook is pressed against the work from above. The holdfast is set by rapping the top with a mallet, and released by hitting the back side. A good holdfast works remarkably well, and is inexpensive and easy to install.

The holdfast can also be used for clamping work to the side of the bench for jointing. If the legs on your base are not too far under the top, simply bore a hole in the side of the leg and use the holdfast horizontally. A woodworker can do just about anything they need on a bench with only a planing stop and a holdfast or two.

It is common to have holes in the benchtop that tools or jigs can be bolted to. In applications where repeated removal and reinstallation of the tool or jig is desirable, screwing into the wood of the benchtop with woodscrews or lag bolts is not an ideal solution, because the wooden threads don't lend themselves to repeated disassembly and reassembly. In such cases, it is useful to create hardpoints, which are metal threads embedded in the wood. These hardpoints make repeated disassembly and reassembly trouble-free. They are essentially nuts that are embedded into the wood in one way or another. T-nuts (aka tee nuts) are an easy way to create a hardpoint. Custom nuts similar to T-nuts but with holes for woodscrews in place of the spikes are sometimes machined for the purpose.

Overhead view of the typical vise positions for a right-handed woodworker. Left-handers sometimes find a reversed layout more comfortable.

Long ago, just as today, woodworkers required a more helpful way to keep the wood in place while it was being worked. A device was needed that could be used effectively on different sizes of wood. Probably the first such device used two stops - at least one of which was adjustable for position - and wedges between them and the work to fix it in place. This is still a cheap and effective method for holding the work.

A screw is really just a wedge in the round. Today, most vises use a big screw to apply the clamping force. The vise is often used to hold objects in place when working on a piece.

There are two main categories of vise (vice in UK English sp.) : vises on the end of the bench and vises on the front of the bench. End vises (also called 'tail vises') are usually mounted on the right side of the bench for right-handed workers. They can typically hold work in two ways: between the jaws and along the top of the bench using moveable 'dogs' in place of jaws. Not all benches have tail vises. A front vise (also called 'face vise' or 'shoulder vise') is typically mounted on the left front side of the bench. They may be used for holding a board to be edge jointed, or sometimes for sawing out dovetails and the like.

Probably the oldest front vise design is the leg vise. It's called a leg vise because one of the bench's legs is an integral part of it - usually forming the inside jaw. The outside jaw also goes all the way to the floor - or nearly so. There is a single screw mounted between a quarter and a third of the way down that goes through both jaws with the nut on the back of the leg. Finally, there is some sort of horizontal beam at the bottom to act as a fulcrum. This beam may take the form of a board that can be adjusted by means of holes and pegs, or it can even be another screw. The leg vise is probably the simplest and least expensive of the front vises, and it is very strong.

Another old design is the shoulder vise. The best thing about this design is that it allows clamping directly behind the screw. This yields unobstructed vertical clamping for cutting dovetails and similar operations. There is also typically a little play in the screw/jaw attachment that provides for clamping of tapered work. This is one vise that should be designed into the bench from the beginning, as it is difficult to retrofit into an existing bench. The primary drawback of the shoulder vise is its fragility, unless the "arm" is attached to the "end cap" using a dovetail or finger joint, usually glued or "pinned" to eliminate rotative movement about the joint, otherwise it is fairly easy to break it with a big steel bench screw. But one should never really have to put that much force on it. Some woodworkers say that the big vise gets in the way of some jobs, others find it unobtrusive. Implicit in a shoulder vise is an integral planing stop, formed by the intersection of the jaw and the jaw spacer, and which allows the shoulder vise to perform multiple duties, such as jointing long boards with a "bench slave" to hold the opposite end. In earlier times, a crochet and a holdfast would perform the same function.

Many of the commercial European benches have a front vise that uses a wooden jaw with a metal screw and built-in anti-racking hardware. These vises are also available as inexpensive kits that can be mounted on almost any bench.

Perhaps the easiest face vise to install is the self-contained iron vise, sometimes called the 'quick-action' vise (except they are not all quick-action). This tool comes already assembled and only has to be mounted to the bench. Usually, auxiliary wooden jaws are added. The quick-action feature makes setting it much quicker and is quickly taken for granted. Not only are these vises easy to install and use, they are also robust. Their main drawback is the relatively high cost.

Patternmaker's vise

The patternmaker's vise is sometimes used as a front vise. This style was originally designed for patternmakers, the folks who make the forms used in metal casting. Pattern making is exacting work using shapes not normally encountered by a cabinetmaker. The patternmaker's vise can hold odd shapes at various angles, and it can certainly hold simple shapes at regular angles. The drawbacks of this vise are the expense, the moderately complicated mounting, and a tendency to fragility. The most sought-after is an antique Emmert, but there are several clones on the market today, including one by Lee Valley Tools that is made of an aluminum alloy—which should be less likely to break—and several from Taiwan and which are clones of the smaller Emmert. A possible disadvantage of the patternmaker's vise is it usually requires installation on a bench which is at least 1-3/4" thick

This is another old design making a comeback thanks to Lee Valley's Veritas Toolworks. The twin-screw vise was popular during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, particularly with chair makers. The updated Veritas design uses a chain to connect the two screws, keeping them slaved to each other. There is also a provision for decoupling the screws so that tapered work can be held. This design has many of the advantages of the classic shoulder vise and single screw face vise, with few of the disadvantages. It can also be used effectively as an end vise. The main drawbacks of the twin-screw vise are the expense and the relatively difficult installation.

The traditional tail vise uses one large screw, either wooden or metal. It is made in the form of a frame, with the back part of the frame fitting under the bench, and the movement of that frame located and restrained by a complex system of sliding tongues and grooves, and runners, such that smooth left and right movements of the frame are possible, but forward and backward movements, or rotative movements of the frame are impossible. The jaw has a face that contacts the bench top, and it has one or more dog holes on the top—often 3 to 4, each spaced 5 inches apart—that are in line with the dog holes located on the front face (apron) of the bench—numerous holes, each also spaced 5 inches apart. This is the least expensive option for a tail vise, but it is by far the most complex to design, construct and maintain. Tage Frid and Frank Klausz popularized this type of tail vise in North America, although its origin dates back to northern Europe (most probably Germany) in the 18th century.

This traditional tail vise also uses one large screw, either wooden or metal. It consists of a movable block with one or more dog holes in it, the movable block rides in a large mortise in the workbench. The jaw has a face that contacts the bench top, and the dog holes are in line with the dog holes on the bench top. The two main varieties of this vise depend on whether the screw nut is mounted in the bench or on the dog hole block. When the screw nut is mounted on the dog hole block the installation is more complicated and expensive, but the screw does not move in and out as the vise is used.

A newer form of tail vise does away with the need of a frame. It uses steel plates for its structure - one steel plate with the nut is mounted on the side of the bench, two others are built into a sliding jaw along with the bench screw. This is a robust design and it's easier to install and adjust than the older style. However, only a few sizes are commercially available (although larger sizes have been custom made).

Some bench designers have adapted face vises for use as tail vises - with differing levels of success. Unfortunately, we are most likely to find the continental style vise used this way, and it's really least suited to the task. When used as a tail vise it has a strong tendency to "wrack" (twist or distort) because of the side forces. It isn't long before the hardware begins to show wear.

The steel quick-action vise doesn't suffer so much from this problem. With one exception, it functions well on the end of the bench. Its main drawback as a tail vise is the distance of the dog from the edge of the vise. Ideally, the dog hole strip should be fairly close to the edge of the bench. This puts your weight more directly over the work and behind the plane, enabling you to put more power and control into the operation with less strain. It is also important to keep the dog holes near the edge so that fenced planes can easily be used. With even a small quick-action vise the dog hole strip is still pretty far from the edge. So if you decide to use a quick-action vise as a tail vise, get the smallest good one you can find.

The twin-screw vise marketed by Lee Valley works well as a tail vise - that's really what it's designed for. The old wooden twin-screw design isn't suited for this task because there is no facility for holding the offside jaw open.

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  A planing stop
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  A holdfast being used to affix a board to the benchtop for chiseling dovetails
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  A simple vise using dogs and wedges (the wedges are colored for clarity)
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  A leg vise
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  A board clamped in a traditional shoulder vise
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  A hybrid vise
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  An easy to install self-contained iron vise
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  A patternmaker's vise
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  The Veritas twin-screw vise
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  A traditional tail vise
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  A modern tail vise
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  A quick-action vise used as an end vise