Moxon Vise – The Wood

2013.03.28

I started with a piece of 7/4 cherry.  Well, at least it was sold to me several years ago as “Wild Oregon Cherry” (possibly Prunus emarginata, also known as Bitter Cherry).  Anyway it was on the rack, it was reasonably dense and fine-grained, and the many knots and frequently reversing grain made me reluctant to use it for furniture.  I sawed out a relatively knot-free piece to become the base or back of the vise.  The board had been surfaced with a planer but still needed to be planed square.  Because of the difficult grain, I soon changed to the toothed blade in my jointer plane.  It works well for this situation, but a downside is that the confetti shavings get stuck in the mouth.

2013.04.01

I went through the same process on a piece of 5/4 cherry.  Since it was wider than I needed, I ripped a narrow piece to add a “foot” or ledge to the 7/4 back for stability and a place to secure clamps or holdfasts.