Bench Making- Mounting the Tucker

The front rail is the backbone of my bench top. It was a single 9" wide 8/4 beech board. I ripped it up the middle, and milled up the parts. It was then taped together to show bookmatched side grain along the top. The corner joinery was cut and I turned to mounting the vise.

The Tucker vise is meant to be surface mounted, but I want the rear jaw to be slightly proud of the front rail, so I can use the front rail as support. It's a patternmakers' vise, so to allow its movement I need to remove a lot of material.

I started by finding the middle of the vises centre shaft, this is the point to attach a router compass to. It was below the rail, so I needed a temporary centre.

I screwed a piece of MDF to the backside of the front rail board. To it I attached a block the same thickness as the rail. I then attached a router compass. I varied the length of the beam several times. Every time the bit depth was set by a tracing of the rear jaw on the top of the front rail.



This photo shows the MDF support, the four holes in the top corners are screw holes from where it was attached to the backside of the rail. The drawn circle represents the area needed by the vises’ screw and guides. The horizontal line represents the bottom of the rail. The vertical line on the block is the vises’ centre line, the hole is the centre of the vises’ movement. The beam shows several holes, that is from the number of passes made.

After hogging out the majority of the waste, I used a gouge and carved the steps away. I them mounted the vise and put it through all of its movements. Everywhere it left a mark on the rail was carved away until I had removed just the wood interfering with its use.





The Blogs

Bench Making- The Carcass
Bench Making- The Legs and Base
Bench Making- Top Dovetails
Bench Making- Mounting the Tucker
Bench Making- The Top
Bench Making- Modifying the Twin Screw
Bench Making- The Drawers
Bench Making- Final Assembly
Bench Making- Completed Work
Bench Making- The Specs