2X Wood Vise Tool Review - Fall 2019

2X Wood Vise Tool Review By Australian Wood Review Magazine - Issue #104

Courtesy of Australian Wood Review
Here's the text provided for easier reading:
(Text next to vice picture)
The US made Lake Erie 2X Wooden vice is fast to operate at 25mm per turn. There are two separate threads on the main screw, with the second starting a half turn after the first. The supplied components are shown.
(Text from the review)
This is a well packaged, beautifully presented, wooden vice screw. All the surfaces, and especially the handle, are silky smooth to the touch. The threads are cut without any blemishes, which I expected of the main screw itself as it is relatively easy to machine, but this was also true of the internal thread of the nut, which is not so easily achieved.
Attention to detail is evident everywhere. The end caps of the handle are also attached with wooden screw threads, and a rubber O-ring is fitted at each end to cushion the sound and the force when the handle drops through the hub of the screw.
The diameter of the main screw is three inches (around 75mm), and the threaded section is 19 inches or around 475mm, long.  The 2X in the name refers to this extra large size (and twice as fast thread), and does not mean that you get two of them for the price.
The main selling point of this screw is that it is extremely fast, opening and closing at the rate of one inch or about 25mm per turn of the handle. There are two separate threads on the main screw, with the second starting a half turn after the first. The pitch of each is one inch so the second one is, in a sense, in between the threads of the first one, and both advance the screw at the same rate of one inch per turn.
It has been unusually humid here in Brisbane for the past few weeks, but I was pleased to see the nut has remained comfortably free on the thread, which eliminated one of my main concerns with wooden threads, especially those manufactured in a foreign country with a very different climate.
I found the installation instructions for using this thread in a leg vice on the Lake Erie website, and whilst these are quite thorough, they did contain references to a 2010 issue of Popular Woodwork Magazine, and another to one of Christopher Schwarz's books on making workbenches. Luckily I have both of these and found they mainly concerned the design of other aspects of a leg vice, such as the shape and dimensions of a front jaw, and the installation of the bottom parallel arm in the front jaw.
Please note that this type of vice requires the edge of the bench top to be flush with the leg it is to be installed on.
A well made brass garter in two halves comes with the vice screw, and with the necessary 14G steel screws. The instructions for installing these are clear and comprehensive, but provision has also been made (a second square section groove has been cut around the screw near the one provided for the brass garter) for installing an invisible, wooden garter instead, through a mortise cut into the side of the bench leg.
If you like the idea of a wooden vice screw you will not find one better than this.
Robert Howard is a woodworker and woodwork teacher who lives in Brisbane.  See www.roberthoward.com.au
The premium kit reviewed here costs US$329.  The basic 2X vice kit (screw and nut) sells for US$239, while a standard kit (screw, nut, and handle) is US$275.
Review vice supplied by www.lakeerietoolworks.com

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