Continuing from the last two posts, let’s now look at gripping an even longer piece of wood by the front vice and extending it to the right, even fully across the length of the bench. We will use a griper easily installed into the tail vice.

The tail vise will hold a T-track set into a piece of wood. This holds the same toggle clamp mechanism as is used in the T-track on the front of the bench itself. (See the previous post for that.) The photos above and below show the set up for this system.  

The next photo below shows a wider piece of long wood held by this system. The extra width requires an extra clamp on the upper area to prevent the top of the board from bending outward during some work. 

Now lets look at how to easily make the part. The photo below shows it.

I used a 24 1/2” x 1 1/2” x 1 1/2” piece of sturdy hardwood. An aluminum T-track, 3/4” wide x 3/8” deep, is screwed into a router-cut slot. 

Screwed in at the top of the post is a 1 1/2” wide x 1 1/8” thick hardwood that was made 4 11/16” long to neatly fit in the tail vise to make the surface with the T-track even with the front of the bench. 

Then another piece of wood, 3 1/2” x 1 3/4” x 1/2” is screwed on top. This top piece, along with the tail vise tightening, holds the T-track device securely.

So now we have covered four good systems (among the many more) that are used to hold wood so we can work well. Next, for a final “part 5” of this, I will go through the whole idea of wood being secured and why it is so important for working well.