Bench #3 - Tail Vise

As I wrote in my first post about this bench, I'm going to stay away from a typical tail vise design. I like the wagon vise from Schwarz's book very much, but for my tastes its not as robust as it could be. So I'm going to beef up the construction with steel, mostly following the design of David Powell documented in Landis' Workbench book.



Powell's design uses a crossbar on each end of the tracks to keep them parallel. This beef's up the construction, but I'm not so sure it's necessary, especially for keeping the guides parallel since the guides are screwed to the underside of the bench top, and reside in rabbets cut into the top. I don't think the crossbars would do anything to keep the guides parallel that the screws and rabbets aren't already doing.



I've designed my tail vise (above) around a German bench screw. In order to maximize the amount of benchtop remaining above the recess cut for the benchscrew, I've placed the guides (tracks in my drawing) as low as possible (they reside in a 1/4" rabbet ), and I've ground off one corner of the nut. The actual construction of the vise will take place after most of the top is glued up.