Woodworking Vise Placement

If you have a tail vise you need a row of closely spaced dog holes up near the front of your benchtop.

Woodworking vise placement. A wood jaw vise requires assembly. That is where i put mine and it just seems natural to me. Carvers will probably find the end position most useful as will those who clamp wide flat work like doors and large panels.

I had always heard that if you are right handed the vise should be on the left hand side of the bench and vice versa for south paws. Put vises all around the bench. If you use holdfasts you need about eight holdfast holes i ve written about this topic more here.

Vise position assuming you re right handed typical mounting positions would be either toward the left of the front edge of your bench or the right end of your bench. I like tim s idea here. The vise s constituent parts include a pair of iron jaws while its other components.

I do not think that it is the same for everyone so clamp it in place a couple of times and see if it seems right to you. This is a bit more convenient than inserting a bench dog in a hole on a fat wood facing to the outside steel vise face and perhaps more important gives you about another inch capacity as doghole vise. Typically the primary function of an end vise is to hold material flat on the surface of the bench pinched between one or more dogs sticking up from the top surface of the vise s jaw and corresponding dogs fitted into holes in the bench surface.

Woodworker s vises are designed to be attached to the underside of the front of a woodworking bench. If your preference is to stand facing the end of your bench and plane that way rather than keep the bench to one side of your body or the other you could mount the vise on the right instead. A metal jaw vise is ready to go right out of the box.

This all presupposes you need to stand with the workbench to your side. Add wood cheeks bolt it to your bench and you re ready to. Add clamping powerto your workbench.