Workholding

In my travels through books and the internet as well as other sources of information, I find lots of stuff about ultimate benches, replete with vises of every type and configuration. I see brags about this or that "new" device that is the answer to all of your workholding prayers. Heck, I've even bought a few. But something you seldom see are descriptions or illustrations of methods of holding work to that ultimate workbench. The stuff that tells and shows you how to secure your work in order to plane, rout, chisel and drill the stuff so you can make something.

My reading of woodworking magazines goes back at least a couple decades and I can only recall a couple articles during that time that involved methods of holding wood down to work on it. One accompanied an article and plan for a workbench, the other was all about holding work.

I am a firm believer in the KISS principle, and try to keep my processes in the shop as simple as possible. That is one of the big reasons I became so enamored to working with hand tools in the first place. I never cared for the complex set-ups for many machine processes, and didn't care for spending a bunch of my limited shop time making the jigs to get machines to jump through the hoops. So many of those jobs requiring complex set-ups with machines are quite simple and straight forward to do with hand tools. As such, I try not to complicate my handwork and part of that is keeping the workpiece in place while one or another process is done.

One of the typical things we need to do is to work on a piece laying atop the bench and keep it from sliding around as we work on it. We also often need to flip that piece around, or to replace that piece with another. Flattening the face of rough stock and later smooth planing the pieces before assembly are a couple of examples of this. One could devise all sorts of methods of holding the piece down using holdfasts or clamping it between a vise and some benchdogs, but that stuff often gets in the way and also takes time when needing to move the workpiece or to move on to the next piece. For many of these tasks you only need something to stop the piece from sliding off the end of the bench, not to hold it snuggly to the bench. For many of these tasks a simple stop toward the end of the bench will sufficiently keep the work in place while planing. A board clamped to the end of the bench with a bit of it protruding above the top of the bench is simple and quite serviceable. Adjustable, too, as you need to be able to lower it for thinner stock, and raise it up for thicker stuff.

While that will work, the simple setup shown above eliminates the hassle of locating an appropriate piece of scrap and a couple clamps. A bolt through each of the slots and into mating holes in the skirt of the bench with some jig knobs and washers make quick work of raising the stop to the proper level for the work, or sliding it down out of the way.

This picture shows mine in action with an added battan held in place with holdfasts. The battan is useful when flattening rough stock which requires pushing a plane diagonally and even perpendicularly to the grain. It is also useful for cutting rabbets with a rabbet plane where you need to apply force against the workpiece in two directions, toward the back of the bench to keep the fence against the work, and toward the end to make the cut.

Here's a view from the other end showing the battan and the holdfasts.

While we're on the subject of Holdfasts, some bit of product pushing is in order. Holdfasts have been at woodworkers benches for centuries. Originally made from wrought iron or mild steel, they were generally made by a local blacksmith. They benefit greatly from being forged, and the cast ones available commercially are no where near as good as the old fashioned forged ones. Forged ones are available, but with a quite hefty price tag. Gramercy Tools, the manufacturing arm of Tools for Working Wood has come up with an economical method of making holdfasts that perform like their blacksmith forged bretheren and at a very nice price. They are the ones seen in the above photos and would be a bargain, as far as I'm concerned, at twice their price.

This shows a piece that is longer than the length above the vise screw being held such that work can be done on the edge on top, i.e. planing in this case, but it could be held for cutting dovetails etc. Since the piece is so long, itmust be set to one side of the vise screw which can cause the vise to rack when tightened, so a piece of scrap is set in to the other side of the screw. In most cases the holdfast is sufficient with the vise to keep the workpiece from sliding downward on the near end when planing is being done. Note the small piece of scrap between the holdfast and the work piece which prevents the workpiece from being dented by the great force applied by the holdfast on that small area.

This is a view from the other side for the above, showing the scrap in place to prevent racking of the vise.

My bench originally came with a front vise that I was not overly fond of so I pulled that vise off and added the leg vise. The original legs of the bench were insufficient to support the large hole needed for the vise screw used, so I added a 12/4 X 12/4 piece of poplar I had to the existing leg. The vise screw exerted enough force that I was unable to attach the 12/4 piece to the existing leg that would hold up, and the 12/4 leg kept being pulled outward. The 6/4 oak piece glued and screwed to the existing skirt overlaps the legs and solved that problem. One of these days I will add a piece to fur out the legs flush with the new skirt, but in the meantime, the vise works well.

This setup required a bit more to prevent the piece from rotating on the near side due to the use of the drawknife, seen in the background on the benchtop. I was using the drawknife to rough out the curves near to the layout line drawn, then used a compass plane to finish to the line and square the edge to the face. The added force was pushing the near side down, even with the holdfast on the workpiece so I added the scrap block with the second holdfast. Since the piece had to rotate on the axis of the vise pad in order for the top edge to move downward, stopping the rotation stopped the downward movement under the force applied. It is possible that when I get around to furring out the legs flush to the new skirt that the vise will exert sufficient force over a larger area and preclude the need for the additional bracing shown to prevent the rotation of the workpiece.

This shows my setup for working on long pieces like this cabriol leg where the piece is odd shaped and a fairly wide angle of access is needed. This works quite well for working with drawknives and spokeshaves. Notice L shaped piece between the skirt and the pipe of the pipeclamp. This holds the pipe far enough out from the skirt for the tailpiece of the clamp to clear the front edge of the benchtop. Initially I used a piece of 6/4 scrap for this, but holding that in place while holding pipe required a third hand to crank the vise down. A couple nails to attach another scrap piece forming the L shape solved this problem.

Coincidentally, I had used the 6/4 piece used as a spacer above with a 45 degree bevel cut on the end as a guide for chiseling a 45 degree angle on some pieces with secret mitered dovetails and adding the board on the edge for the lip to sit on the benchtop created a handy fence for the next time I need to use that as a donkey ear style shooting board. I don't have a lot of extra space (well, really no "extra" space) in my shop, so anything that performs double or triple duty is appreciated.

One of the oldest, simplist, and probably most neglected these days, methods of work holding are wedges. Simple to make, and with a myriad of uses, they take up very little space in a shop. The earliest clamps used wedges to hold and apply pressure where it was needed.

These pictures show a small panel being glued up using two pairs of bench dogs and a pair of wedges to provide as much pressure as needed to create a nice, tight glue joint. I used a holdfast with a small batten across the joint to keep the pressure from the wedges from causing the panel to fold at the glue joint.

Wedges are quick and easy to make. A scrap piece of appropriate length and 4-6 inches wide (this works nicely for a piece about 16 inches long) is simply cut on the diagonal, the cuts smoothed and you're ready to go. Keep in mind the distances between the pegs or dog holes etc that will be used when determining the width of the board to use.

Chris Billman, a woodworker who frequents the Woodnet Forums, provided a few pics from his website showing some of his methods of holding work.

Here is his answer to holding wide panels vertically for such work as cutting dovetails. One of the benefits of a twin screw vise is that it alleviates the racking experienced when using single screw vises to hold work on the side of the screw. He uses a clamp in this setup to secure the other edge of the workpiece.

While more than simply workholding, a shooting board does hold the work, and this simple dedicated 90 degree shooting board is just the ticket. The bench hook type shooting board is a quick and simple device to make, and does a great job of a very neccesary task of obtaining square smooth ends to workpieces.

Chris' DT page describes his method of cutting dovetails and is worth checking out. He gang cuts the tail boards to save on layout and cutting time, then uses a fret saw to remove the waste.

He then stacks the pieces as shown above and secures them to the bench using a holdfast to pare to the base lines, paring halfway through slightly undercutting them, working his way through each board, then flipping them over and paring from the other face of the board.

While I often see folks hand holding the two pieces together for marking the pins from the tails or vice versa, I've not perfected that method myself, and here Chris shows how he holds the piece properly oriented together for marking.

Here's a pic of a very handy shop made vice contributed by a fellow forumite, Hank Knight. It is especially good for holding large panels for such work as dovetailing. He has four T-Slot bolts imbedded in the bench front which allow for various sizes of work up to about 28-30 inches wide. He provided me with some construction photos which can be found here.

I'll be adding more to this page as time goes by and I take pics of other setups as well as submissions by others who might want to help out.

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