Wednesday 14 December 2016

Work Benches from 1983


On my recent visit to Dansel gallery http://www.danselgallery.co.uk/ I picked up a few magazines from the early 1980's. This one with Alan Peters on the front cover immediately caught my eye.

It was interesting to see the work benches on offer from that period, both from Scandinavia and both still in production today in exactly the same design.


What struck me was that both benches have very practical shoulder vices, which are sadly lacking from any of the mainstream benches on offer in the UK today.
Both manufacturers have different solutions to the issue of moving the jaw in and out smoothly. The Sjoberg bench has a free spinning circular plastic face which works well except it has a tendency to twist the work on the final turn. The Lervad vice has a fixed rectangular jaw secured to the two rods. To me this seems the better solution with the only small draw back being its inability to hold tapered work. Going by the far greater numbers of Sjoberg bench that come up for sale on E Bay I guess this was the more popular.
It would interesting to know the prices then, perhaps I should do as the advert says and send a stamped address envelope and wait for a prompt reply!


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