Geez, Rick. It could have been a compliment... Escher's more famous than both of us put together...

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I don't have as many Festools as Fred. Or Marcou's, or Brese's, or Lie-Nielsen's, or Lee Valley's, or Blue Spruce's, or Harold and Saxon's, or...

Okay, okay... One for the Rib Boy. Would of been a little weak, but then you had to throw in the bit about the dog. (notice how that dog has since been whining?)

And on an entirely different topic ... one of the reasons Laurie wanted this bench was to have something to put her new Jointmaker-SW on to build stuff.

Laurie - check out this link. I think you definitely need one of these! It's a very clever jig to hold your JM-SW to your (brand new) bench top.

Jointmaker Pro Bench Hook | Wood Zealot's Workshop

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I don't have as many Festools as Fred. Or Marcou's, or Brese's, or Lie-Nielsen's, or Lee Valley's, or Blue Spruce's, or Harold and Saxon's, or...

Things have been pretty hectic these last few days and have not left much time for us to describe what has been done. With Laurie safely returned to the cornfield skiff, I’ll try to do some catch up on the details.

After bolting on the rear face of the end vise, I realized the middle of the benchtop was low by about 1/16”, so we loosened the bolts and tried to flex it upward. It turned out to be tougher than I thought, and the smaller clamps did not have enough gusto nor reach, so I had to get the mastodon jaws.



It was pretty exciting to bolt the vise screws to the face. Laurie was intently watching while I ran the lag screws in with the C12, but she apparently was not paying enough attention to notice that I slowed the drill down at the end, nor the sudden lurch at the end.



Our first spot of bad news came when I installed the coupling chain across the twin screws and was going to adjust the jaws parallel. That’s when I realized that both of the vise acme screws were the same, instead of the second one that has the setscrews for adjusting the jaw parallelism.

This left us with a bit of a dilemma....we couldn’t finish the bench!!!



After pondering the problem for a few minutes, I realized we could pull the screw out of my bench and put it into Laurie’s bench. But this time, Laurie wanted to drive the lag screws in to secure the acme screw assembly.

So do you remember when I said earlier that she was watching me do this, but didn’t notice how I slowed the drill down just before the screw bottomed out? You guys are going to kill me for damaging your beloved Hasslefactor, but instead of slowing down, she gave it full-trigger. By the time I could get the first syllable of “watch out” out of my mouth, the C12 had spun around, whacked her in the eye and knocked her to the ground, and did 2 more revolutions in midair before she caught it.

I didn’t realize the drill had hit her in the cheek bone. All I saw was the C12 doing a double summersault and Laurie falling back and making a spectacular catch. It was quite impressive, until I realized she got hurt. Thankfully no permanent damage or bruises.



So I finally got the coupling chain installed and the faces parallel, when I was suddenly hit with 10 year old déjà vu. I did the exact same thing when I first installed my own twin screw vise; one of the nuts needs to be rotated 90 degrees so the handles can be lined up. Time to take it apart one more time!!!



Finally, success! I got the twin screws installed with the faces parallel and the handles in sync.



Even Inky got bored with the number of times I had to pull the vise apart.

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That is some serious back pedaling there...

So the Skipper and I are out for breakfast right now (Black Magic's not fully provisioned yet). We sit down at this booth by the window, he takes a long look at me, gets a surprised look on his face, and says....

"Oh, you really DO have a black eye - I thought you were kidding!"

Good thing Rick already did all that 'splainin....

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Laurie
TS 55, RO 150, DTS 400, CT Mini, Pile o' Card Scrapers, Sextant, Abacus, Chocolate Temperer, 4 Candy Thermometers, Bench Cookies (Double Batch), 15 X-acto Knives, Leatherman Tool (Blue), Various Wire, 3 Fids, A Few Ideas Too Many, 287 Pencils, String

Wow, I'll bet it's been a loooonnng time since you've had a black eye!?! Who'd of thunk it would come from a placid hobby like woodworking??? I used to do a lot of whitewater rafting and skydiving -- perhaps you should give those a thought.

Laurie, I'm glad you're okay.

I'll bet you're pretty impressed with the torque on that little C12.

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John

1 Toolie, 2 XL Festool Polos

Oh Good! So Clay bought the cover story we invented? I am so glad I didn't have to explain how I decked you for making a pass at me.

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