Round Bench Dogs that Don’t Rotate

If there is one disadvantage to round bench dogs, it is that they can occasionally rotate as you are clamping something between two dogs or when you are planing against a single dog.

It’s a minor annoyance, but it’s real.

An Italian reader devised a very clever solution to this problem that is quick. I hope I’ll have some time to try it out when I return to my shop at home next week.

The idea comes from Leonardo, one of the moderators of Legnofilia forum: www.legnofilia.it. The photos and description below come from Andrea, a blogger at www.langolodispogliainferiore.blogspot.com.

Take a pad saw, the one with a dark handle and brass fittings that you bought on eBay because it was so pretty and then you put away because you did not know what to do with a coarse, slim and cut-on-the-push-stroke saw.

Straighten the blade and file it rip. Cut about a half-centimeter-deep kerf along the face of a round wooden dog with your so pretty and now useful pad saw, and do the same along your round dog hole. (If you are tails-first person you can reverse the sequence.)

Now find a flat strip of metal that fits the two kerfs. Any metal is fine, but avoid mercury and plutonium. Iron, copper and brass are OK. File an ovolo, a bead or a lamb’s tongue on the exposed corners of the flat metal strip and you are done.

This is a fantastic idea. Give it a try and then let us know how it goes.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. I might just try to modify the dog holes on the 18th-century workbench I built – entirely by hand – for this DVD. It’s an interesting journey into handwork.

Chris is a contributing editor to Popular Woodworking Magazine and the publisher at Lost Art Press. He's a hand-tool enthusiast (though he uses power tools, too).

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