Woodworking Bench Vise-The Front Vise

When you buy or make your own woodworking bench, you need to make sure that your bench has a vise attached to it. A vise is just like an extra strong hand which can improve your work. With a vise you will able to make smoother sawing, steadier plane strokes as well as make sanding faster. Here are some information about front woodworking bench vise.

The front vise type is normally placed at the woodworking bench left corner (at the long edge of the bench). It is great for clamping a drawer side upright when you are cutting the tails of a dovetail joint, clamping a board edge-up horizontally for the purpose of hand planning, or any other job which need a strong hold on wood pieces without the use of your hands.

What kind of front vise is best for your bench? The best front woodworking bench vise is the one which is made from cast iron. Mainly, it has 2 steel rods to align the jaws and also to prevent inward flexing of whichever side of its outer jaw if you just use one side of the vise. There are also vises which have fast release mechanism to make the changing between various clamps easy.

Normally, the jaws width shall describe the vise. Hence if a vise is described as “7 inch vise”, it means the vise has jaws width of 7 inch. You will also normally find that the vise maximum opening capability as well as the screw diameter are listed in the vise specifications.

It is best that you choose a vise which has an opening wide enough to hold the thickest wood piece you shall be working on. In figuring out the opening, remember to subtract the wooden pad thickness, which you will be installing prior to your work, to have the actual opening. So, a vise with a 9” capacity and with pads of 3/4'' thickness shall give you 7 1/2” opening to work with.

However, there are some odd occasion where you shall bigger opening. A vise with 13'' opening capacity shall basically cover for almost everything you might run into.

I hope this article will help you in buying your woodworking bench vise. Whatever vise you choose to buy, remember that a woodworking bench is not complete without a vise.