I made a workbench for my workbench. For working on small stuff, and to get things a bit closer to me, as I seem to desire pretty often. I made it only from stuff I already had, the only things I bought were the T-bolts. The wood is “whitewood” 2×4’s that were rejects from another recent project. They were knotty, warped, and twisted, but that’s all I had.
The bench measures about 16 ” (without the tail vise) x 12″ and clamps to my big bench, or any table, with F-clamps.
I had this cheap little vise that I decided to use as a tail vise. It doesn’t have a vise dog, or whatever that thing is called, and usually one would make a wooden jaw with dog holes in it, but I decided to try something else. Mostly just to see if it would work. I made a wooden jaw with two slots in it, through which go the T-bolts, that pass through the holes in the vise jaw and are tightened with two knobs. The idea is that the entire jaw moves up and down to be able to pinch the right side of the wood. It has about an inch of travel. Added some scrap leather to the jaws with contact cement.
The cut-out on the front is to hold a small machinist vise, which clamps to the bench. I made a sleeve out of aluminum, just to protect with bench from getting gouged by the clamp.
Finished with a few coats of shellac.
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 |
 Oak plugs |
 Not pretty, but works fine |
 T-bolts in slots |
 Dog storage |
 Jaw raised |
 Holds for face work |
 Holds for edge work |
 Holds for end grain work |
 Holds wider boards |
 Cut-out on front for small machinist vise |