Work on the wagon vise

I've decided that to hold boards the long ways on the bench (say for a bookcase or dresser, the long tall sides) a wagon vise would be nice.  This guide has a bit of info: Lumberjocks -- wagon vise

I didn't quite know if just having the face of the vise against the 'wagon' (the moving bit) would be enough so I thought I'd try a thought experiment with capturing the head piece.  Here is the head piece:

And a quick picture of how it attaches to the vise.  Basically, the screw turns in the near of the two black pieces, which is held still in the end of the bench.  This then moves the handle and the little black piece towards and away from the center of the bench.

And these are my ideas about capturing.  Drilled a hole through a board, and then hollowed out a place for the screw using a chisle.  Then drilled from the side to the center so that a screw driver can work the screw that keeps the end from just slipping out the black piece.

I also used a chisel to clear a bit of space for the end to rest gently against the block of wood.

At the end of the day, I decided that this is just too complicated to work well.  Worst of all, if anything goes wrong with this wagon it'll be basically impossible to repair without serious headaches.  Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Saturday -- Ripping some boards for top and stretchers.

This past saturday we took the 8 boards that were 2x12x8s and ripped them into thirds.  First step was to rip off one edge to make it nice and straight.  We had a pretty good setup, an infeed table from metal saw horses a 2x4 frame, plywood with some melamin on top.  The outfeed is a workmate, with a 2x6 clamped in it, with some pvc pipe on top for a smoother surface.

After we got one edge nice a straight we set the fence on the table saw to about 3 1/4, or what the worst board could fit 3 boards with wiggle room.  So, the top is going to end up 3ish thick, 7 1/2 feet long and about 24 inches deep.  Here is a quick picture of the table saw setup.  On the right hand side you can see the saw benches.  Nice to not have the wood on the ground.

And here is some of the finished product.  Probably hard to see, but those are 1.5"x3.25"x8' boards stacked up.

Here is a slightly better picture of the raw material.  Using Douglas Fir.

Getting setup

It's time to get started making this bench.  The idea is to make a workbench to do handwork on.  That means it's going to be pretty low, fairly narrow across the top and as long as possible.  I'm stealing most of the ideas for this bench from the Schwarz workbench books, the Blue and the Red.  I preferred the blue book, but if I was planning on designing the entire thing the red would be very valuable. The style of bench is called the Roubo.  Here is an example of the style of bench: lumberjocks project

I built some saw benches to do work on, plans are in one of the Schwarz books and here.  In addition I bought some Ash from a hardwood shop out in Eagle: High Desert Hardwood  The gentleman who was running the shop the day I went was very helpful.  I hope after the bench is done I can go back and get some more wood from them.  Probably some oak or maple for a dresser.  But, bench first, next project next.

The ash is for the leg vice, a guide for the leg vice, a sliding deadman and a planing stop.  Here is a good view of one of the pieces of Ash.  It's 8/4 which means 8 -quarter (1/4") wood, or 2" thick.

And these are just end views of two more pieces.

Here are 4 pieces of 2x12x8 wood.  Went to Stone Lumber to get a bunch of 2x12s.  They were out of 8 foot long pieces, but were nice enough to cut 16 footers in half.  These will get ripped the long way into 3 pieces.  Most of them will go into the top, but some are going into stretchers.

A view of the rest of the wood, including some 2x12x12s that have been cut in half.  We're storing them on top of some shelving so they aren't the easiest thing in the world to get to.

And my shop helper: