Re: The Workbench ..... WORKS!!!
OK... back on the workbench project. I've been pretty busy with my "day job" lately, and I was out of town for a week... but now I'm hopefully back on track.
I mentioned before that the twin screw vise needed some tweaking. Actually, it turns out that it was really fine... I was just too tired at the time to do the necessary troubleshooting. I thought I would have to shim it, but I didn't. I just needed adjust the alignment of the two screws. The instructions explain exactly how to do all of this, so I won't go into too much detail. I'll just say this vise seems a bit finicky until you get it all dialed in.
The face vise also was not quite aligned with the front apron - it was about 1/32" out of parallel. The mounting plate shifted very slightly as I was tightening the lag screws, and this really can't be fixed. So, I just used a hand plane to take down that 1/32" off one end of the vise jaw - now it fits perfectly.
You may recall that I lost about ½-5/8" in the length of my benchtop because the woodmaster rounded over the edges (see
reply #109). Well, the vises would have fit perfectly if not for that. :-? So, I had to modify the trestle base slightly to make it all fit. I used a 3/8" McRabbeting bit on the left side:
... and I used a forstner bit to drill out ¼" on the other side, to clear the twin screws:
I hated to do it... but now it all fits just fine. The walls of the mortises on the top of the trestle are ¾" thick, so I really don't think the trestle was weakened. I would have had to drill out more if I had used the dimensions called for in the FWW article. :roll:
Just to prove that the workbench "WORKS"... here it is in action, holding that front vise jaw down while I planed down the face:
I could get used to this!!!!
Now I just have to glue it all up and plane the aprons & vise jaws down flush with the benchtop, make the tooltray bottom, and apply a finish.