Early Access Video: The REAL bench dog.
Added 2025-06-07 11:00:09 +0000 UTCFriends:
I think today's video is a real treat. It combines a mystery, an old tool, and a bit of tool-making. I learned a lot making this one and I think you'll like it.
Also, I'm currently at the National Meet for the Midwest Tool Collector's Association in Eerie, PA. It's a great time and I brought a camera, so I should have video report for you.
Lots to look forward to!
Happy Saturday!
--Rex
Comments
A while back you had a short video about having one loose board in an English Joiner bench. If you could arrange that the pointy ends of the dog ended up in that board most of the time, it would be easy to replace that board when it got chewed up.
Madeleine Yeh
2025-07-04 20:39:58 +0000 UTCA possibility suddenly occurred to me. I wonder if they had kind of a sacrificial board towards the back of their bench and they used work holding like this specifically to avoid tearing up the front of the bench where the work actually sits. That could certainly make it worth putting the extra metal into the tool. I also wonder if perhaps one was nailed into the apron of a bench for work holding sometimes. It would be helpful to know if all the tips of the ones a person owned pointed the same direction I guess.
Lacci Battafarano
2025-06-14 01:33:55 +0000 UTCI've been pondering this and I still have a lot of unanswered questions about these. I can't help thinking a much smaller simpler dog that nails into the bench much closer to the board being held would do what you were doing as well or better and be much less costly. All that extra metal has to be serving a valuable purpose for it to be a solution people would go with. I mean it could be that the size and structure is to make the dog springy or something, but there has to be some reason that they would prefer something like that over a smaller simpler solution. Or perhaps it is like it is because it had multiple uses and yours is just one. And it wouldn't be subject to such strong lateral forces either which would make it more reliable. I strongly suspect there has to be at least a lot more to the story than the conclusion you reached in the video.
Lacci Battafarano
2025-06-14 01:21:04 +0000 UTC
