A Handy Workbench Accessory - The Moxon Vise - 331

here in mississippi we have made it through the summer drought and now it's nothing but rain rain rain rain gloomy rain for the next i don't know nine months so that means it's a perfect day to make a moxon vice and for that moxon vice i'm going to use a piece of eight-quarter ambrosia maple move thank you that i've had in my shop for quite a while i am totally pressing the easy button with this project and that means i'm using let's see any defects on this side no no not really i'm using a set of templates that a friend of mine sells so it's going to take all of the guesswork out basically i just need to trace around them and then we'll rough these out at the band saw [Applause] [Music] all right due to the size material that i have and the size of these templates i kind of had to kind of have to nest them in one another and not only can my bandsaw blade and not make this turn but actually let me let me zoom out not only can my blade not make this turn but there there's too much length here to actually fit into the capacity of the bandsaw so i'm just gonna go ahead and make this cut at the workbench real fast [Music] fatality round two finisher fatality round three fight flawless victory these are the two jaw pieces and i do have to remove a little bit more waste material with the band saw before i start template routing but before i do that i'm going to run these through the jointer and planer to get them all nice and square first [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] every piece of wood has a good side and a bad side right well you're looking at the good side of both of these and before i put the templates on it i want to make sure that as i put these together the templates will be on the outside of both pieces that way when we drill through if there's any tear out which there likely will be then the tear out will be on the inside of both of these it's never really going to matter at all and it's not going to be seen so now the templates can be applied and as you can see i've already got the double stick tape on these because i've already used these before that's the beauty of templates you can use them over and over i'm actually going to set this up so i can use the table as a reference as i attach these before i actually start template routing i want to talk about the bit that i'm using because this is an interesting bit a flush trim bit and this bit is interesting in the fact that it's got a bearing on top and bottom as you can see the bottom one is removed but the bearing slides on and then the stop collar slides on below it so in a normal setup you can use the bearing on bottom or top in this case i need it to be removed because the effective cutting area is not quite enough to chew through all of this material in one pass i'm gonna have to do it in two passes with two different bit heights but that's pretty cool i can remove these bits or these bearings rather the bottom bearing and get to cutting another cool thing about this is it allows you to use the bottom and therefore it's pretty much understood that this may stick out of the collet by just a little bit and therefore there's a pretty long shank on the bottom side of the bit so you can have it stick out of the collet by just a little bit more than say normal and still have a lot of stability this will allow the router to be lowered let me see let's go ahead and set it up right now anyway i'm going to lower the collet so the collet is not touching the bottom of the wood and now i can set the bit height and i actually lucked out right there it's perfect so the bearing the top bearing will ride up against the template and i'll cut i don't know about 75 of the thickness of my material all the way around i'll do that on both pieces and then lower the bit in the router table so that the bearing is now riding on the freshly cut surface and cut the rest of the thickness down here but this bit is pretty versatile and it does a phenomenal job because it's got a up and a down cutting action so it's kind of like a compression cut or a combination cut whatever you want to call it anyway i'm going to get this tightened up and get to routing [Music] [Music] wow quick takeaway from the router table you see see all that burning right there probably not because i'm so too far zoomed out quick take away from the router table you see all of this burning right here on this inside i guess i forgot i was working with maple and maple burns really easily especially hard maple which this is and i just i simply went too slow and it burned really bad so i'm gonna have to sand that down which sucks because sanding end grain to remove a burn mark no fun on the other side it's nice and clean and crisp no burn marks at all yeah no burn marks at all and that's because i sped up one of the biggest things that will help reduce burning on router tables or on router bits rather is to either slow down your router rpm the speed at which it spins which most of the time that'll take care of it or speed up with your process of moving the material through the router bit so slow your router down and you'll get less burning i already slow it down slowed it down but i went too slow and therefore got burning but that's okay i'll take care of that both of these holes on this template need to be drilled all the way through with a three-quarter inch forstner bit before i do that though it's a little order of operations here i'm going to use this three-quarter inch forstner bit to first establish a center point in both holes and then with that center point established i can use this one and one eighth of an inch forstner bit to drill down the depth with a depth equal to the height of this nut and that's because this nut is going to be embedded into the surface of this rear fixed jaw and of course this is circle this is uh six sided so i'll have to trim these up trim the corners up with a chisel but once this hole is established then the center point from this forstner bit will still be in the wood and i can use that to reference this three quarter inch bit to finish the hole all the way through [Music] that's a lovely sound i can switch over to the three-quarter inch bit and drill all the way through all right so as it turns out the center point from that first forstner bit is too large for this bit so i can't reference perfect center off of that center point luckily this is already routed to size so the template where'd you go the template will fit on the back side perfectly lined up it is symmetrical and then i can just use the template as a reference to drill the rest of these holes or drill these holes all the way through so that's pretty cool that means the the tear out from pushing through with the drill bit is inside the counter bore so that'll never be seen and it looks looks as centered as my eyes can tell so that's it for this one this one is a little bit different what's really cool about these templates being cut with a laser is how thin the kerf is on the laser so this is all these were all cut together like this and you simply just pop them out and use whatever pieces you need we don't need the inside pieces so those can go away and instead we just need these rounded slots this is another two-stage process or two-step process and what we need to do is use that same three-quarter inch forstner bit making sure that the slot is i guess as parallel to these edges as we can get it and where's my hammer i put my hammer up we need to establish the center point for this drill bit to go and i'm using the rounded edge of the forstner bit up against the side of this slot and need to drill all the way through right there and we'll do the same thing on this side drill all the way through right there same over here and once we drill all these once we drill these all the way through we'll you know chisel the ends top and bottom so that we do create a slot and what that's going to allow is the whole jaw to rack left and right for odd shaped pieces another thing that's needed for this racking to occur is the use of these rounded or dished washers so this has a dome on this side and there's a matching dish on this side and that allows these to slide back and forth and allow for you know clamping pressure evenly on the face right here but the jaw to be skewed one way or another uh so that means after these are drilled i'm gonna keep the template on here and use a let's say i think it's a one and five-eighths of an inch yes one and five-eighths of an inch drill bit to go down the thickness of this washer so this washer will be captured in a counter bore as well toasty now the washer counter bore can be drilled and i set the depth of the bit appropriately for that washer back at the first jaw i can insert come on the threaded rod and a nut just to hold it in place while i position the nuts so that the faces are parallel with the edges and then i'll trace around it with a pencil and then chisel out the waist making sure to leave the pencil line one thing to note is the drill bit that i used the forstner bit is slightly larger than this particular nut so there will be a couple little rounded areas in the middle that i'm not going to hit with a chisel but i don't think that matters much all i really need to do is capture this nut in the wood [Applause] i win that is some good double stick tape this is the second time i've used this tape and it's just been sitting for i exposed know about a month or so and still works just fine probably get a third use out of this tape so done with the templates now see this is the outside of the rear jaw this is the front side of the front jaw i need to determine uh how long to cut how long to cut the threaded rod and basically it all boils down to how much capacity do you want in between these two why is this rocking oh there's some trash in the way how much capacity you want in between these two i know that the nut is captured on the inside of this back jaw but there's also going to be another nut on the back side of it kind of like a jam nut to lock the threaded rod in place so we'll have to add that to our measurement and i want i don't know what am i going to be putting in between these two jaws uh probably a panel like so to do end grain work like dovetails um basically just dovetails so if that's the case uh i'm not gonna need you know two inches maximum right so that means i can space these out about two inches add the thickness of the handle that i'm going to use and then just take a measurement so five inches plus plus a nut on this side plus the handle on that side means seven inches is what i need to cut the threaded rod just for a little bit of wiggle room i'm gonna go ahead and cut it at i guess eight inches long that way i've got a little room to play with but they're not sticking out so far that they're in the way this is the threaded rod that i'm using and you can see the white line right there and a white line right there that's where i'm going to be cutting this threaded rod this threaded rod to get a usable section here and a usable section here for the vise and any time you cut threaded rod you will damage the threads so it's a good idea to put a nut on either side of the cut that way this nut can be backed off this way and repair this side of the threads this nut can be backed off this way repair this side of the threads and this going this way i'm not worried about this over here these threads will be damaged on this but this is the offcut i'm not using this anytime soon and there's a fresh factory edge all the way down that is just fine uh and of course over here is a factory edge so don't need to worry about that i'm gonna go ahead and make these cuts right here and right here with a cut-off wheel hey google turn on the fan as you can see the threads get damaged during the cut so with this one on there you can back it off and it'll rethread it there's more resistance right there as it pushes the threads where they need to be go back and forth a few times good that reformed the threads with the flimsy material that is left over now this is kind of sharp and will cut me so i'm going to take a file and file from the outside in rounding over all of this and there's no need to show that i'll just do that real quick off camera the construction is complete on both of these so all i need to do now is sand them and for that i'm going to take these nuts out this is the inside of the movable jaw and this is the only face that i'm going to add some type of grippy material this is uh this is what's called cork rubber and i'll install it with some double stick tape back at the workbench i can put the threaded rod in place and as you can see i've got two nuts on here this bottom one is the captured nut inside the wood and then this top one is a jam nut tightened on here so this is a nice rigid connection and only the bottom one will be captured into this so on both sides you can drive these in place now the threaded rod isn't going anywhere to finish assembling the vise i went ahead and clamped the rear jaw to the workbench just the way it would be clamped when you actually use a vise like this so on both sides i've got a half inch pipe clamp that's plenty enough to hold this down to the workbench you can also use hold fasts through your workbench to hold down on those tabs that's fine the only thing that really matters is that this back jaw is proud of the workbench by just a little bit so every time you put material down in here it's not going to interfere with this workbench next up is the front movable jaw obviously with the cork rubber cork rubber facing the inside obviously and then these split washers or not split washers i'm not sure what these the technical name for these washers are but then they go in like so where'd the other one go can't find you behind me the dished washer then the domed goes on front of that and then of course the handles one on either side and these are just the cheapest handles oh little wax is needed there cheapest handles for this threaded rod you can get some different handles if you like different handles but in this case very little i'm going to put wax on that very little clamping pressure is needed so i don't need a longer handle or any type of other leverage this will do the job just fine there you go moxon vise i went ahead and put some gloves on because my hands are filthy from messing with this metal and i don't want to get all that into this this freshly sanded surface before i put a finish on it and i'm going to put a finish on it right before i leave here today so that way it can sit overnight and i'll probably just close this video with some images of it completed for a finish i'm using some danish oil just a natural danish oil and that's what i recommend for like a workbench anyway because it'll it's got a little bit of urethane in it or varnish in it so that it provides a little bit more protection than just a regular oil and i don't want a straight up film film finish like a polyurethane or lacquer because that film finish is going to get damaged and dented and compressed in from these clamps every time you clamp it down and it's just going to look like crap over time so danish oil is the way to go for one of these or just one or two coats of of shellac that's it uh but before i do that i want to briefly talk about this as it's completed and one of the things that's beneficial with these slots being slots instead of holes on this front jaw is that this vise can be racked so it can open up on an angle for odd shaped pieces which is rarely convenient but sometimes convenient more more so than that it's it's more convenient to allow you to pull the vise jaw back without it grabbing on one of these threaded rods if it was a precise hole so one of the main benefits or actually the main benefit of a moxon vise is that you can use longer stock in the vise and not have to worry about a screw down below so to elaborate on that for a second just pick just picture this half of the vise not existing all we have is one screw over here a single screw vise typically you can put material on top but you're limited on your depth based upon the distance from the top of the screw to the top of the vise and if you need to go with a longer piece like this you can put it to the side but as you clamp down with this screw the vise is going to rack out so the side way over here is going to wobble back and forth and you're not going to be as stable in that regard so that's why you have two screws in this setup you can put the material down below and clamp it in place with both screws and you have a really nice stable piece up here with no obstructions down below but every time you take material out and put it back in if you're using the same thickness stock you don't have to mess with both handles every single time and the way to get around that is as this is loosened up put it to one side in my case i prefer to grab the piece with my right hand and use my left hand for one screw so i will adjust this one first and you simply adjust it till it get until you get resistance so we know right about there is where the resistance is i'll back it off and then put a little bit more resistance or tighten down just a little bit more and then from there this piece cannot go to that screw it's too tight so all you need to do from now on is simply tighten one screw on this side and you have nice even clamping pressure all the way across it's not going anywhere every time you need to adjust or take the material out you can take it out flip around do whatever you got to do and keep it to this side and only have to adjust one screw every single time so it's a very convenient little setup that went even tighter which still works just fine anyway a moxendvice is an inexpensive vice that you can add to your arsenal and i recommend everybody who has a workbench who's into using hand tools to go ahead and make one you'll be glad you did i think that's it for this video you guys take care have a great day all the links for relevant stuff that i used in the video will be down in the description if you're watching this on youtube if you are watching this on my website thank you very i very much appreciate that watching on my website really helps out more so than just on youtube and of course links will be in the article for everything as well so that's it you guys take care have a great day and i'll talk to you in the next video you