A few weeks ago, I was going on and on about that Watertown all wood table slide and how I might find a way to re-purpose it for my main woodworking bench as a tail vise or a front vise, as part of the vise, known as the "guide rails".
So when it comes to wood and woodworking, "I know a guy". He has both an incredible working knowledge of all the various products and services associated with running a family owned, generational, at that, wood shop. He really knows his stuff and is an excellent craftsmen, or more accurately stated, He is a well seasoned professional "sawist or sawsman". So many new terms and so few brain cells left. 🙂
I told him about my interest in doing this project and inquired about getting a custom wooden screw made and the associated connector parts and his response was not to respond at all ! , And let his silence do the talking! So I was kind of taken aback by that and then realized, I was missing important dimensional details and so without that at the ready, he had no real way to attempt to understand exactly what I was after. And to be honest, I hadn’t done my homework, so the professor had no magical answers up his sleeve for me.
So I scrapped the whole idea and just went online and bought a 10.5 inch wide, 20 inch deep, basic cast iron and stainless steel under bench-mount hardware kit and had to just make my own face board jaws and handle for it. So I got it all mounted up over the past couple of days and had to engineer out a way to have the bench’s tool tray act as the rear jaw of the vise and not get crushed in the process. But I think I got that accomplished successfully and was able to crush a tomato juice can, as an opening test of the vise’s fitness and of my under-mount job of deflecting or shunting the crushing pressure this vise can exert, which is borderline scary! but cool at the same time! I’m such a 3 year old! lol
For now, I made use of a 1 inch thick slab of Butternut hardwood. This is touted as being "the white walnut" wood but its a fair bit lighter in its weight and density and may end up being the weaker link against it’s walnut challenger at the other end of the screw.
The workable opening is just a shade over 12 inches, which is likely way more then I’ll ever need. The width of the front and back lumber is 18 inches. There’s also a top to bottom plate height of 3 inches at the rear and 6 inches on the front. But all of that can be changed by injecting a thinner meeting line at the top of the boards via rubber strip, etc.
I think I can now go back to the drawing board on those antique table slides. 🙂
Cheers! 🙂
