Let’s see how to make a wooden vise for the workbench that will be very cheap. This DIY vise is very easy to make and will come in very handy in our woodworking shop. As we will see, all we need are some cheap woodworking clamps and a few scraps of wood and plywood that we may have in the workshop.
A few months ago I installed a vise on my workbench and realized how useful it is in the shop.
But I recently discovered that for some projects the screw through the center of the vise is in the way when I want to hold a workpiece vertically. So, I thought of a way to make a DIY “vise screw” with a pair of metal F clamps, one to each side of the wood jaw of the vise, so that it will have free space in the center and like this I can put my workpieces there vertically without much trouble.
To make this woodworker’s vise I used a pair of my cheap F clamps, the ones I had upgraded by putting a couple of plywood sheets on them to keep the jaws from marking the wood when clamping.
The idea for making this DIY vise is very simple, as it is just a matter of finding a way to hold two clamps under the apron of my workbench without them falling out, so that they can hold a wooden vise jaw without it falling out when the clamps are loose. With some strips and some pieces of plywood I made two brackets in which the fixed jaw of the F clamps fits. The brackets prevent the fixed jaw of the F clamps from moving forward. And with two simple L hooks I prevent the metal F clamps from falling.
I screw the brackets into position on the inside part of one apron of the workbench, and I also screw the L hooks in place. I only have to rotate them under the metal bar of the F clamps once I put the fixed jaw into the hole of the brackets.
This makes it very easy to assemble and disassemble the clamps used as a “screw” for this DIY vise for workbench. All that’s left is to screw the plywood sheets from my cheap F clamps to the piece of wood that I’ll use as DIY vise jaw, thus ensuring that the wood vise jaw won’t fall to the ground or move sideways.
