There is no more divisive topic in workbench building than the face vise. Tail vise vs. wagon vise. Wooden screw vs. metal. Quick-release vs. traditional. We asked twelve of our most experienced community members which vise they use, why they chose it, and what they’d do differently. Their answers were more varied than we expected – and more practical.
The quick-release camp was the largest group. Seven of twelve builders use a commercial quick-release vise, with the Jorgensen 41PB and the Veritas quick-release splitting their loyalties. The argument: quick-release mechanisms save significant time when you’re cycling through many workpieces, and modern casting quality is good enough that there’s no real difference in clamping force. Counter-argument from the wooden-screw camp: commercial metal vises rack under heavy loads, metal jaws mar softwood even with faces installed, and they feel industrial in a hand-tool environment.
The wooden screw holdout was Joel from the split-top build above. He turned his own vise screw from white oak on his lathe, bored the nut with a traditional screw box, and built the entire assembly over one weekend. “It’s slow,” he admits. “Two full turns to open an inch versus the quick-release’s half-turn. But it never racks, it never mars, and when it fails I can fix it with shop scraps.” He says he gets asked about the wooden screw more than any other feature of his bench.
The holdfast-only minority was two builders, both hand-tool focused, who dispensed with vises entirely. “A properly set holdfast is faster than any vise,” argues one. “Zero time spent spinning handles – just set the work, one mallet strike, done.” He works on a heavy bench with thick legs and uses holdfasts exclusively for workholding. He says there are edge cases he can’t handle (clamping odd-shaped pieces, some edge-planing scenarios) but that 95% of his workholding needs are covered. What’s in your bench and why? The comment section is the right place for this argument.