Building a Real Woodworking Bench presents plenty of opportunities to screw up. And the price tag on one can be steep since workbenches are made from thick stock that ain't available at the local Borg. Case in point. my bench top, with 4 to 6 inch wide by 2 inch thick apron sides, 3 inch thick by 8 inch tall end vise jaw and two layers of 1 /3'4 inch thick maple for the core. A shoulder vise and a Veritas Twin Screw vise to put in and three 1/2 inch "all threads" to tie the front and back aprons together and to the core.
Lots of holes and counter sunk holes to drill with their center locations critical, dados to route, BIG dovetails to cut, a couple of mortise and tenons to do, rub blocks under the vise screws to make and fit. Lots of potentials for major screw ups. More than once I measured five or six times and double checked to make sure that I was about to countersink a hole in the outside of an apron part. On the holes for the Twin Screw I went obsessive on the marking and measuring, forstner bit alignment before starting to drill ...
Sometimes things just go really well - especially if you make a significant effort to have it go that way. In this case things were complicated by the fact that I was working with everything upside down, the whole bench top being done laying upside down on my 4 x 7 1/2 assembly bench. What was "up" was actually the bottom and it was fun keeping track of "front" and "back".
Everything but the shoulder vise jaw was done. Was busy patting myself on the back for a job well done and appreciating my run of good luck when I "stepped in it". Layed out the notch to fit under the shoulder vise spacer, cut it nice and neat on the bandsaw and got out the circle template to lay out the nice curve for the outside edge - no sharp corners on this jaw to bite me later.
Cut the curve close and used the big disc sander to sand to the line. In the middle of hand sanding the end grain nice and smooth down to 320 it hit me. OOPS!
BUT - I could turn the piece over so the nice roundover is outside where it's supposed to be. Bandsawing another notch would still leave a more than adequate "tongue" on the vise jaw. And this mini-crisis presented an opportunity.
I keep getting hints that I'm supposed to be doing woodworking at this point in my life. And this screw up, with its "fix", was another reminder. I had some of that one side sticky UMHW tape which I'd picked up at woodworking show at least three years ago. Shoulder vises are notorious for hanging up since they're supported only in the middle. The "tongue" sliding between the underside of the spacer block and the top of the base is what hangs up. Why not put a couple of strips of the UMHW tape on the bottom of, and the outside edge of the spacer block and the top of the base leg under the "tongue". Put strips on the top and bottom of the "tongue" and the edges that'll rub up against the edge of the spacer.
Here's the idea.
