I'd avoided dealing with the Veritas Chain Drive Twin Screw end vise. I had the impression that it was going to be complicated and little room for screw ups - the latter being one of my many specialties. The end cap it attaches to is an integral part of, and dovetailed into, the bench apron. Make a mistake and you don't just rip and cross cut another piece. Redoing the big dovetails, while not that tricky, do take a fair amount of time.
Got out the instructions and all the parts. The first page of the instructions starts with the following
IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you are the kind of person who only looks at instruction sheets AFTER something goes wrong, this is one product where you should mend your ways. If you ignore these instructions, we can almost guarantee trouble.
Please try to save all your innovative design urges until after you have installed the vise. At a bare minimum, at least read through the instrcuctions before you start being creative.
The two easiest ways to screw up are:
- By drilling holes in the wrong place and at an angle
- By using warped wood with the intention of straightening it out with bolts, screws and brute force laterIt isn't a lot of fun to follow instructions exactly but this is one time when it will save you a lot of grief.
Layed out the parts and checked them against the parts list in the instructions. All the parts were accounted for - but,, with the exception of a spare Drive/Shear Pin, there were no extras. The little parts went back into a zip-lok bag and labeled Veritas Twin Screw. Loose small parts disappear easily but a zip-lok bag of small parts is a lot more difficult to make vanish (Yet another "word to the wise".) Here's what you get - the screws and inside "nut" aren't shown. Note that you need one 1 1/4 inch diameter and one 1 1/2" diameter Forstner bit, along with a Forstner bit extension to install this puppy.
Disassembled the bench top apron (nice to be able to dry fit, measure things, then take them apart to work on) and did the twin screw vise holes layout on the right apron en cap's "outside face" using the top edge as my refrence plane for vertical alignment and the left and right sides for horizontal positioning of the center of the holes.
Drilling holes 3 1/2 to 4 inches deep posed a problem. Forstner bits don't seem to be made to drill holes this deep. Luckily I'd bought an extension for forstner bits, not knowing what I'd ever use it for. Sometimes an impulse purchase that has no foreseable use comes in handy. So if you plan on a Veritas Twin Screw Vise - add another %40+ dollars to your budget, uless you already have the bits and extension.
The other fun and games was supporting 5 foot long parts on the drill press table, even with the much larger table I built for mine. Discovered that the Rockler roller stands can. by bringing the legs close together, go up to almost four feet.