Vises - LN vs Veritas - Bench Build Question

[Belle City Woodworking]

Hi all,

I am in the planning stages for building the last woodworking bench I will ever build, and I was wondering if anyone has made a head to head comparison with the Lie-Nielsen and Veritas bench Vise hardware.  Specifically, twin screw face vises, and sliding tail vises.  I would like to know your thoughts on the two.  The cost of the twin screws are rather close, but the tail vise is where the LN is significantly more, is it worth the difference in your opinion.  

Thanks for your thoughts and constructive input.

John

[Mike Brady]

I have experience with both and have used the LN chain drive as my front vise for ten years.  Here are a couple of things to remember about the LN vise: 
 
1. The wood chop does not come with the vise.  You can buy it ready-made or make it by fabricating two clam-shell halves and gluing them together.  I made mine out of the bench material, which is ash.  The LN unit is maple.  Making the jaws requires the use of a router and careful layout, so consider if you want to tackle making them.

2. The LN vise is more robust than the LV. The hardware is massive.  For some reason many users of the LV vise install it on the end of their benches.  To me this makes sense only if you plan another type of vise for the front of the bench and you have a lot of room to spare around your bench.  I find Lie-Nielsen consistently surpasses Lee Valley in the build quality of their tools, as they should, considering difference in price.  I figured that one good bench investment would last the rest of my lifetime so I bought what I considered to be the best at that time.  There are other good vises to be had, but twin screws are hands-down superior to single-screw vises and supersede the need for Moxon auxiliary vises, for example.

[Belle City Woodworking]

Thank you Mike for that information do you by chance have any experience with the tail vises from both companies?

[Mike Brady]

No I don't have a true tail vise.  When I built my bench in 2008 the choices of tail-vise hardware were very limited, so I opted for reusing a record bench vise on the right end.  It holds a bench dog and works fine as a quasi-end vise and is handy for operations on small pieces such as holding scraper blades for sharpening.  There is a case to be made for having a vise that is perpendicular to the front of the bench.  In my opinion though, a twin screw vise is wasted on the end of a bench.

A couple of comments regarding the original question:  

The screws on my LN vise are longer than they make them now, so I can hold wider stock.  Also pertaining to the screws; those screws need to be absolutely square to the bench and parallel to each other, or the vise will not operate smoothly along the entire travel of the screws.  Careful layout is essential.

[Belle City Woodworking]

No I don't have a true tail vise.  When I built my bench in 2008 the choices of tail-vise hardware were very limited, so I opted for reusing a record bench vise on the right end.  It holds a bench dog and works fine as a quasi-end vise and is handy for operations on small pieces such as holding scraper blades for sharpening.  There is a case to be made for having a vise that is perpendicular to the front of the bench.  In my opinion though, a twin screw vise is wasted on the end of a bench.

A couple of comments regarding the original question:  

The screws on my LN vise are longer than they make them now, so I can hold wider stock.  Also pertaining to the screws; those screws need to be absolutely square to the bench and parallel to each other, or the vise will not operate smoothly along the entire travel of the screws.  Careful layout is essential.

Thanks again for all that information Mike!

John

[Philip1231]

I have the LN face and tail vises on my bench and have no regrets: they are superb. No experience with the LV hardware.
I have to agree with everything Mike stated: the front vise jaw and end vise jaw are both projects in themselves. I made a series
of router templates to produce them and it turned out very nice. Unfortunately, I ended up selling the set of templates, but once you see the instructions for installation, you can create the templates fairly easily with scraps laying around the shop.

[Belle City Woodworking]

I have the LN face and tail vises on my bench and have no regrets: they are superb. No experience with the LV hardware.
I have to agree with everything Mike stated: the front vise jaw and end vise jaw are both projects in themselves. I made a series
of router templates to produce them and it turned out very nice. Unfortunately, I ended up selling the set of templates, but once you see the instructions for installation, you can create the templates fairly easily with scraps laying around the shop.

Thank you for your input, Phillip!

John

[Philip1231]

Pics of bench with vises:

Thank you for your input, Phillip!

John

[Belle City Woodworking]

Pics of bench with vises:

Very nice!

[kwadams]

Dream shop, Phillip!!