Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Something Different With a Moxon Vise

The Austrian Christmas Chicken arrived a little late this year, and he brought a Moxon vise with Benchcrafted hardware.  He constructed it with maple stock,  and gave it to me as a present.

The vise clamped to my bench top.  Sooner or later I think I will put some holdfast holes in my bench to hold it.  For now, the clamps work perfectly.
I look forward to really getting to know this vise.  I have been meaning to make one for a couple years now, but haven't gotten around to it yet.  Thanks, Alex!

Yesterday I cheated on the stool build-off and built my stool early.  I work every day this week, including Saturday and Sunday, so there was no other time to build the stool.  I can't wait to blog about my build, but I will wait until Saturday to post about it.  The only thing about it I will say is it exceeded my expectations.

As far as this vise goes, I did find a use for it on this build.  Although my understanding is it excels at workholding for dovetails, I find it also makes a pretty darned good joiner's saddle, you know, a way to hold rectangular stock to plane it into an octagon or into a dowel.
Moxon holding a stick.

ready-built planing stop

The set-up for this.  Both scraps are the same thickness in this case.
So, there you have it.  It worked perfectly.  If you haven't taken two minutes to make a joiner's saddle, but have a Moxon vise, that is two minutes of your life you don't need to waste building another shop appliance.

View the rest of my stool build here.

3 comments:

  1. Lightbulb moment! Duh! Thanks so much for the epiphany, Brian.

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  2. Not fair! Now you get to sit back and watch while we scramble on Saturday... How many time zones ahead of me is Europe anyway? 96? Can you let me know who wins the Super Bowl early too? Glad to hear it turned out well can't wait to see.

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  3. The moxon vise is on my list of projects alreday. Can yot take a few pictures from the rear side? I have seen hundrs of pictures from the front, but only a very few from the back side.

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