All Dogged Up

I have a very basic, and not very good, vice that I installed as a tail-vice on the end of Workbench #01. Today I added some dogs — a hefty chunk of steel in the vice itself, and some sprung wooden dogs to go in the bench.

The steel dog would have been better in brass or copper, as it would be safer if a plane should hit it. However, I don't have a piece of brass of the required size, so steel it is. It's a piece of 1" x ¼" bar, so somewhat over-engineered for the purpose, but again that's what I had.

One advantage of making a housing in the vice-jaw for such a hefty piece of metal is that I could use a piece of wood in it quite safely — a quarter-inch thick stick of oak or ash should be quite strong enough for the job, and if the steel dog ends up making me too nervous, that's probably what I'll do.

The dog-holes in the bench-top go right through, so sawdust and crap will just fall through instead of clogging them up, and thus far I've bored pairs of holes out to about 450mm from the vice. If I need any further away, they can be bored as and when they're required. The springs in the dogs themselves aren't very potent, but sufficient to hold them in place when they're not under tension from the vice, and that's all they need to do.