Leg Vise (of sorts)

While The Fuzz makes no claims as to his joinery, he does find himself involved in various projects at times.  And many of these involve wood working.  He has learned through experience that having the piece in question firmly secured goes a long way toward making the job more successful and enjoyable.

And so the other day he decided to add a leg vise to his workbench.

In researching this project, he discovered that one aspect of a real leg vise is a way to keep the jaws alined vertically parallel to each other.

It seems that there are a number of ways to achieve this.

Here we see a couple of ways this can be done.

On the left there are a multitude of holes with a pin to adjust for the thickness of the work piece.

On the right we see a set of 2 screws linked by a chain and sprocket system to keep thing lined up.

But in his research, The Fuzz had happened upon a post where a guy had used an alternate, much less complex method to achieve this.
It seems that in his research this guy misread another post, and developed an alternative system of his own.
(The fact that he had been drinking a bit of beer could have contributed to this!)
Anyway, rather than using a complicated arrangement, he simply used a spacer at the foot (3), corresponding to the size of the work piece.  He further refined this by utilizing a tapered spacer - thus making the whole thing adjustable as well!
Great idea, and definitely compatible with The Fuzz's style.

Naturally, The Fuzz had his own way of doing things.
Because of the offset of the leg (1)...

He thought it best to mount the "jaw" at a corresponding angle.

This block (2) is only temporary for test purposes and will be replaced with some tapered pieces later.
He hit the Home Improvement Store for some threaded rod, nuts and a couple of pieces of pipe.

Holes were then drilled through the "vise" and a corresponding spot on the leg of the workbench - being careful to keep everything lined up and level. 

The pipes were threaded into these holes...

And a nut welded to the one in the leg.

The Fuzz had driven a piece of a hex shaped socket* on the other end of the threaded rod foolishly thinking it would hold...

Of course it didn't once it was screwed down and pressure applied.

So he ended up welding that one as well.

He finished up by carving out a hardwood handle to fit over the hex shaped end.

If this thing seems to be just a little bit tilted, that's because it is.

But this was intentional in order to allow for a slightly wider jaw.  This slight angle shouldn't have any affect on the griping power of the thing.

*This was like one of those old sparkplug wrenches...

Kinda  like this one.