Frankenvise

 When shaping cabriole legs it is nice to have a wide vise to hold the leg at each end. You can rotate the leg to work on shaping with spoke shave and files and it should be at a comfortable height. I decided to make a detachable leg vise that can open to about 20 inches and is about 44 inches above the floor at it's tip with a 5 1/2" wide jaw.

  I found some maple strips and laminated them up to make the jaws orienting the edge grain on the faces to combat flexing.

  A bolt and nuts used for heavy forming work along with some pieces of cast pipe tee and flanges make up the vise screw. A real bench screw would be best but I used what was on hand.

  Bolt the contraption to the work bench and voila, Ken's crazy leg vise.

Vise secured to bench with two Frankenstein neck bolts.

   I plan to have some long curved lamination coming up that will require lots of shaping with a spokeshave so I hope this device will work. I think it will require some adjustments and who knows, I might find a good vise screw somewhere in the future.

cheers

Ken