Recently, a friend who taught many of the photography workshops I’ve attended asked me to help him out with a woodworking problem: he has an antique workbench that he wants to put back into use, but he’s lost the knobs that went on the original tommy bars (handles) for the two wooden vises on the bench. He asked if I could reproduce them. I agreed, as I’d been thinking about building some things with wooden screws (e.g., nipping press for bookbinding) anyway, and wanted to get some of the tooling and skills needed for that. So I took on the project. We agreed that I’d build entire new handles, as matching the potentially unique screw threads on the original ones might be tough. The project has turned out to be an interesting journey…
Once I got the tool rest sorted out, I also improved the treadle a bit so it didn’t tend to walk around all over the place while I was working. This more triangular set up (with leather hinges, as called for by the original plans) worked well, allowing me to stand on the cross piece (which held the whole thing in place) while operating the long treadle plank.
