Official Luthiers Forum!

Anyone here using a fancy traditional woodworking bench with dog holes and the end vices and such? And do you find yourself using these features?

A friend gave me one of those benches almost a couple of decades ago knowing I would never buy one for myself. Knowing what I know now, I would buy one for myself. I use the end vises all of the time for many different things. The bench dogs see very infrequent use, but I do put clamps in the holes to hold my shooting board in place. He bought me the bench after he was there while I was jointing on my old bench. As I planed, the bench walked across the floor. When I was done, I put it back where it belonged. This bench doesn’t move. The only modification I had to make was to put it up on blocks—from the factory, the work surface was just too low.

Mine is not a wholly traditional woodworking bench that weighs several hundred pounds, with drawers, etc., but it does have dog holes and an end vise, and I use them both:



30" wide, 60" long, store-bought laminated maple benchtop bolted to those cast iron bench legs that Lee Valley used to sell a long time ago. A Veritas twin screw vise (they still sell those) is mounted on one end. Dog holes are in a regular pattern around all four edges, and up the middle.

For guitar building, the dog holes mostly get used as mounting holes for other vises or special jigs/fixtures that are temporarily bolted to the bench. When I am working on sheet goods, the dog holes are where I whack down holdfasts to keep the sheet goods from scooting around.

I can set up temporary clamping gizmos using the dog holes and some Veritas Wonder Dogs. Or, just wedges and bench dogs.

I have never regretted setting up this bench in this way. It's been one of my better decisions when it comes to my shop.

Nice! I have a feeling also that one tends to adapt around what one has…