Leg Vise for "The Woodworker's Mistress"

Leg Vise for “The Woodworker’s Mistress”

In a past project I posted an Antique Ohio Tool Company Leg Vise Screw that I overhauled. I used this vise screw to make the Leg Vise for my new woodworking bench, The Woodworker's Mistress.

Along with the Board Jack I decided to add another bit of humor to my bench. In designing the “Chop” for the vise I wanted to make the leg vise, or part of the leg vise, actually look like a woman’s leg. I wanted to keep it in the spirit of the Leg Lamp in the movie “A Christmas Story“ yet still have a fully functional vise. Since the lower part of the leg vise chop is basically used as an outrigger I made the curvy leg portion out of the portion of the chop below the vise screw.

The rest of the vise is made pretty close to the plans in the November ‘09 issue of Popular Woodworking. Although I did make a roller guide with a wooden bell-crank & a wooden adjustment screw to help keep the vise operating level & smooth. And the Parallel Guide is retained with two wedges. I used a piece of 3/8” steel rod for a parallel guide pin & turned a maple handle with a copper ferrule.

I also made a Crochet for a planing stop when clamping boards on edge in the vise. I used three brass threaded inserts on the front of the bench top so the crochet could be used in two positions if necessary. The handle knobs were made out of hardwood “doll heads” from Michael’s Craft Store. They were real cheap, about a buck & a quarter each. All I did was bore a hole in them with a 1” forstner bit & glue them to the handle after it was inserted into the vise screw.

-- Frank, Florissant, Missouri "The New Show-Me Woodshop"