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I use bench holdfasts because they’re so convenient and provide such a tremendous amount of clamping force. However, in the process, they can mar workpieces, especially softwoods. The traditional [...]

Since I received my Benchcrafted Roubo workbench a year ago, my woodworking life has tremendously improved. My new and heavy bench (I wrote about it here and here) has 1” holdfast holes that can [...]

You can hold anything on your workbench with just pegs, wedges & notches – no fancy vises required. It’s difficult for most woodworkers to imagine a workbench without screw-driven vises. But [...]

I need to get busy on my workbench top so I can decide how many of the different work-holding designs to use at my bench. At this time at my home shop, I’m using a pair of Gramercy [...]

Let me say this first: You are welcome to put a holdfast hole anywhere you please. No one will think less of you. In fact, if you are questioned by your friends as to why you put a certain hole [...]

We have iron planes and wooden planes. Iron vises and wooden ones. Iron clamps and wooden ones. So it shouldn’t come as a shock that you can have a wooden holdfast. But it does. Carpenter and [...]

Way back in 2005, I wrote an article for issue #4 of Woodworking Magazine about holdfasts. At the time, very few woodworkers knew what a holdfast was, and the article reviewed available [...]

  It seems I have more holdfasts than internal organs. And yet, when I was dropping something off at Managing Editor Megan Fitzpatrick’s house this week, I was struck by two holdfasts in her [...]

The first time I taught at Roy Underhill’s school in Pittsboro, N.C., Roy made sure that I met Peter Ross, a blacksmith who worked at Colonial Williamsburg for 25 years. We all ate dinner at gas [...]