Workbench Holding Hacks
By Garrett Hack
Garretthack.com
In a typical week building furniture, I’m smoothing or shaping a variety of parts with planes. The challenge is how to hold those parts so I can focus entirely on my task. I want them secure when held, yet easily released when I need to check my progress, say to check for square or fit. This combination of security and ease of release has led to lots of different hacks to make my bench work better. I’ll provide my top workbench holding hacks below, and I hope they make your bench work better too.
LIFETIME VISE HANDLES
I use my side vise a lot. It’s quick, can hold big or small things—at different angles if needed—and it’s secure. So many times while teaching in a new shop, I’ll spin the vise handle and it falls off. Here’s one of my best tips to make sure this never happens to you.
What I love about this one is that it’s a fun trick to puzzle your woodworker friends. The handle is clearly one piece of wood with the grain flowing continuously from end to end. Tell them you steamed one end, compressed it, and pressed it into the vise.
It’s much simpler than that. I turn a handle about 1/4” longer than I need, then slice a long scarf from about 2” in from each bulbous end. I do this on the bandsaw with a wooden hand screw tight on the trailing end so the handle won’t rotate as I guide it through the saw. I plane the surfaces of the scarf so they meet nicely, spread some glue on both, slide them into the vise, and clamp. A little end pressure helps align things. I clean up glue squeeze out with a card scraper, apply a little wax, and now have a handle that will never fall off.
DOG STOPS
Stops—solid pins or boards to plane against—are some of my favorite aids. The simplest one for narrow parts is a bench dog elevated just enough to hold the work but not so high it gets planed off. My square dogs are ideal; they stay put and don’t rotate. I use a single dog far more than paired with another dog in my tail vise mostly because it is faster to set up, nearly as secure, and satisfies my need for quick release.
I often plane multiple parts at once; it’s efficient and increases my accuracy. Stacked parts make a larger surface to support my plane, so it’s easier to plane square if that’s my goal. By flipping the parts and/or shuffling them, small discrepancies become obvious and get planed off.
Certain tasks require a customized dog. I have one with a birds mouth cut into the face to hold a mitered end, and another with a tiny sharpened brad in the face to hold small parts better.
For holding curved parts I use a related stop—a board with a V cut into the end. I clamp the V stop to my bench and use a dog and/or another V board at the other end. It’s simple but effective. Every curved shape needs a unique setup and takes a bit of creativity.
LONG STOPS
Frank Klaus has a beautiful French polished bench with no frills other than a long planing stop along the left end. I copied the idea and made one from Macassar ebony (beautiful and tough), 2 1/2” wide, and tapering from about 3/4” at the bottom edge to 1/2” at the top. Since I am also right handed, I secured it to the left end of my bench just back from my side vise. Three big pan head screws into slotted recesses secure it. The tapered shape causes it to get tighter as I raise it, as high as 3/8” or just barely peeking above my bench for thin parts. It’s extremely useful for planing wide panels, tabletops, and lots of parts worked together.
For work such as beveling a drawer bottom, where I like the edge I am planing to overhang my bench just a little (so I can check the fit to the groove as I go), I use a variation of the ledger stop. I set up a board across the middle of my bench, butting it against a dog at the front and clamping it at the rear. I can angle it for angled parts. To make my setup even more secure, I sometimes clamp a board that I call an “outrigger” to the back of my bench at right angles to the stop. This keeps the work from sliding. For extra security, a holdfast works well to hold the outrigger or the work.
PLANING BOARDS
I’ve got a whole series of what I call planing boards that are useful for holding small pieces and are sometimes used as shooting boards. They are nothing more than flat boards with a dadoed stop about 1/8” high across one end. I use rosewood or another tough hard wood for the stop. I butt my planing board against a dog and clamp the far end, or hold it between the dog and tail vise. When the stop gets worn or planed down—as it does—I drive it out and replace it. I’ll smooth the whole board at the same time, as it gets well used for chiseling and all sorts of other work that could damage my bench top.
At the other end of one planing board, I’ve drilled a hole and driven in a 3/16” diameter hardwood pin. It’s barely above the surface, just enough to hold veneer thickness pieces such as string inlay. As the pin wears, I chisel a little shelf into it and eventually make another pin.
Some parts are just awkward to hold, such as small and thin drawer bottoms or flat curved parts. To secure them, I use a large pine board with a fixed wide stop and nail on other stops where needed. I secure the board between dogs, sometimes with the additional help of a holdfast.
BENCH HOOKS
Bench hooks are a very old and traditional way of holding things before clamps and vises evolved. They are fun to make, usually in pairs. Just keep in mind the “hook” should be a little under 90° so it will grab the bench’s front edge. I have a single bench hook that I have used for years as a stable place to saw small parts, to pare against, and for all those little tasks of chiseling and cutting where I don’t want to risk cutting into my bench. A pair of bench hooks is useful for crosscutting long pieces on my bench.
HOLDFASTS
A holdfast is a really old idea that works like a third hand, clamping almost anything well away from a bench edge. They clamp vertically, which makes them useful alone or in conjunction with a tail vise and dogs, or with other clamps. Mine is a variation of the forged L-shaped holdfast that you whack to set tight and whack again to release. It’s a quiet version that I can screw down with the pressure I need. It fits into a steel insert in my bench with thread-like teeth.
I use my holdfast to hold one end of a springboard when smoothing the sides of drawers, for securing curved tabletops when beveling the edges, or for any task where I need additional holding power. The hardest part of getting started using a holdfast is taking the plunge to drill some holes into your beautiful bench—but it’s worth it. I say that, but I have only drilled one hole so far.
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