Reply To: Workbench Vice
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Phil, that’s a Veritas-branded vise, so you’re pretty much guaranteed high quality. They always sell good quality stuff, but they only put their brand on the best, usually designed in-house.
Johan, I took a look at that vise and had the same thought as Scott. I recently picked up the Czech-made face vise from leevalley.com, which Paul has moderately recommended and bought for the NY school. It weighs in around 40lbs, and every quality face vise I’ve seen has been in this range. That Northern Tools vise was listed at 13.5lbs. Seems like the castings must be very thin, and maybe they used hollow tubes for guide rods.
Ken, I have a leg vise on my bench. I bought the hardware from Benchcrafted ( http://www.benchcrafted.com/GlideVise.html ). I currently have the standard adjustable pin-stop variety, but this is less useful when following the Paul Sellers method. Paul uses the quick-release and auto-width adjustment features of his vise constantly. For instance, he’ll work on an edge and then quickly flip the piece longitudinally in the vise to work on the face. With the pin-stop leg vise, you have to constantly switch the pin back and forth. This is sometimes a bigger hassle than others, and usually when it becomes annoying, I figure out a different way to do the work. But if I was just starting and didn’t have a vise yet, I would go with the cheaper face vise style that Paul uses. Having said that, my new lust is for Richard Maguire’s pinless leg vise on my next bench. Not currently in the budget. http://www.theenglishwoodworker.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=65_71&products_id=264