Reply To: Work-holding for small pieces, no vise?
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5″ and 3/4″ thick? That seems like a very reasonably sized piece of wood, there should be many options.
You could abut your piece against any bench dog which stands less than 3/4″ proud of the bench (or if your vise has the steel dog, raise it less than 3/4″, or clamp a piece of wood in your vise less than that height and plane against it. As mentioned above, clamp any piece of wood shorter than 3/4 onto your benchtop, and plane against that.
If you have the same setup as Matt Kinney, you can hold the piece in a handscrew clamp by the end where you’ll start planing, and then put the screw clamp in the vise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOBcHoae-0Y
If you’re going to do this repetitively, you can make a jig…much like what Paul made for tapering chair legs identically, but you obv needn’t concern yourself with the tapering bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbedWFrnZxs&t=92s