Installing an HNT Gordon Front Vise on my Hofmann & Hammer workbench
I should start by saying that despite the length of this blog (with a level of detail that is probably unnecessary) retrofitting my workbench with the HNT Gordon Front Vise was incredibly easy and quick - under 1 hour - excluding the 30 minutes of waiting for glue to dry. It can be summed up as follows:
Remove old vise.
Measure the thickness of the bench where you are going to install the front vise. If it is less than 75 mm (about 3”), glue on a spacer to bring the thickness to that. If it is over, rout out a recess for the vise plate which will bring the thickness to 75 mm.
Clamp the vise in place.
Drill the holes for the lag screws and install with washers. Offset the two front lag screws by about 1/16” towards the front of the mounting plate. Offset the two back lag screws by about 1/16” towards the back of the mounting plate. This will lock it in place so that the vise can’t shift. Install the middle two lag screws, if desired. Make sure everything is tightened really well.
Done.
I love my Hofmann & Hammer workbench, but I’ve wanted to retrofit it with an HNT Gordon Front Vise for a long time. The current vise racks, and I am always double checking that the piece of I’m trying to hold is actually secure. This usually entails placing an offcut of the same width in the opposite end of the vise. Depending on the project, this may or may not be such a simple exercise. If there are several different widths, it can be maddening and really slow down my workflow. Additionally, I really like the streamlined profile of the HNT Gordon Vise. My shop space is pretty small at about 500 square feet, and my hips are getting tired of constantly bumping into the factory installed vise.
Image 1: Factory installed vise that came with my Hofmann & Hammer workbench.
So, before the madness of the Christmas holiday season set in, Aaron and I retrofitted my bench with an HNT Gordon Front Vise. Truth be told, this wasn’t a two person operation (except for flipping the benchtop over), but it did make documenting the process easier. After we flipped the benchtop over onto a pair of sawhorses, we removed the old bench vise. It was attached with several screws, a couple of which came almost stripped from the factory. Yay. The only complication about this step was that one of the screws was directly under the threaded shaft of the vise. The only way to get to it was to unbolt the plate from the front jaw and completely remove the threaded shaft, handle, and front jaw. Once this was done, I was able to remove the last screw and the old mounting plate. Under the mounting plate was a spacer block, which was not the correct width or thickness for the HNT Gordon Front Vise mounting plate. Aaron was able to pop it off pretty easily with a chisel and mallet. There was barely any glue attaching it.
Image 2: Bottom of workbench with old vise. Does anyone else have the terrible habit of wiping off glue on the bottom edges of their bench? Image 3: Removing old screws on mounting plate. See how the center one came stripped from the factory? Image 4: Unbolting front plate to remove the threaded rod, handle, and front jaw of old vise.
The HNT Gordon Vise will attach directly to a 75 mm (about 3 inches) thick bench top. The space where the old vise was installed was 55 mm thick so we needed to glue on a 20 mm spacer block. We could have done the math, but in reality I clamped the front vise in position and measured from the top of the workbench to the top of the front jaw; this gives me the thickness of my spacer block. I added a heavy 1/32” so that the top edge of the front jaw would sit slightly below the bench top. I made the width of the spacer block equal to the mounting plate (Ok, there was a scrap that just happened to be the exact width so I went with it). After milling the spacer to the correct thickness, I glued it in place. (Note: if my bench had been thicker than 3” where I wanted to mount the Front Vise, I would have had to rout out an area for the mounting plate to the correct thickness. This could also be done with hand tools if preferred.)
Image 5: Measuring for thickness of spacer block. Image 6: Gluing on spacer block.
After a short lunch break, it was time to attach my new bench vise to my old workbench. First I checked to make sure the area with the spacer was square to the front edge of the bench. Luckily, it was. If it hadn’t been, I would have squared it up with a hand plane so that the front jaw of the vise would sit absolutely square to the front edge of my bench.
Every HNT Gordon Front Vise comes with a small piece of wood in the box. Many might look at it, shrug their shoulders, and toss it out. But you don’t want to do that. The spacer is about 2 mm thick. When you’re ready to drill the holes for the mounting plate, you clamp your Front Vise in the correct position on your bench. Then place this small spacer between the front jaw and the edge of your bench and tighten the vise. Now you are ready to drill your front two holes for the lag screws. I used 3/8” diameter lag screws that are 2 1/2” long with washers. We started the holes with the mounting plate in place, and then removed it so we could make sure the holes were drilled straight, square, and to the correct depth. We placed the vise back in position and started installing the lag screws. When they were snug but not tight, we removed the spacer from the vise, and tightened the vise all the way up against the edge of the bench. This forces the front of the mounting plate up against those two lag screws. When we drilled the holes for the back screws, we offset the centers just slightly to the back of the mounting plate. This ensures the mounting plate is locked in place and cannot shift during use. I chose to also install the 2 middle screws, just for good measure. (Note: using the 2 mm spacer for starting the front two holes also ensures the barrel of the vise does not extend beyond the edge of your bench, which acts as the back jaw for the vise.)
Image 7: Starting the front two holes with the 2 mm spacer in use. Image 8: Pre-drilling the holes for the lag screws. Image 9: Tightening the lag screws. It was at this point that I discovered that I did not have the correct size socket wrench for these lag screws. Oh, well.
Now it was time to flip the benchtop over and back onto the bench base. I double checked that the vise was square and parallel to the top. Then it was time to clamp various chunks of wood in all manner of positions to make sure there wasn’t any racking.
Image 10: Done! New HNT Gordon vise installed and working perfectly. Image 11: 2 mm spacer (comes in the box with your vise) for offsetting the front lag screw holes. Don’t discard it!
I’m very happy with the vise. It performs beautifully, is easy to wind & unwind, takes little effort to tighten, and my hips are very happy with the low profile. Plus it just looks good.(Note: I also drilled a hole in the edge of my bench so I could use the HNT Gordon Tilting Plate to hold tapered, double tapered, and odd shaped pieces of wood. I completely forgot to take pictures of this. My shop is currently having some renovations done so it is a complete wreck. As soon as I can, I will get some photos and update the post.)