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A Moxon Vise, named after Joseph Moxon (who described the vise in his book titled Mechanick Exercises), is a great vise, and best of all it is easy to build yourself. A Moxon vise is especially useful for cutting dovetails and sawing because it holds the material rock solid, and the middle of the vise is not obstructed by vise hardware. All you need is some 8/4 hardwood for the jaws and our Rob Cosman Moxon Vise HardwareKit to make whatever vise size Moxon bise best suit your needs.
I started off making a simple moxon vise with the Cosmanized kit. But it quickly snowballed into a mini bench. The vise hardware was easy to install and works smoothly. I have 16-3/4" of space between the threaded rods and springs. This 18" X 36" bench top extends to a clamping capacity of 6-1/2 feet between the end vise dogs and extending support dogs.
The Moxon vise kit came as advertised. It is well made and the vise I made following the instructions (although helps to watch the video) works great.
The Cosmanized upgrade is impressive. This will be my vise 90% of the time. Great job 👍
I have been a woodworker for decades, but only after retirement had time for instructional videos and the like, and I really really like the Rob Cosman videos. So I have purchased several tools so far, all of them superb: tenon saw, dovetail saw, blind dovetail chisel, diamond plate, sharpening stone holder, et. But after assembling and testing this Moxon Vise, I am not happy with it, which is a first. A Moxon Vise is not only for hand dovetails, it is a versatile vise with potentially a wide opening. But so far I dislike each of the "Cosmonizing" details: the little knobs are OK but as he says in his video, they cause you to hit your knuckles unless you restrict the opening capacity of the vise and therefore its versatility. Not worth it; spinning the wheel works fine. The wheel spins freely not because it is accurately machined, like the Benchcrafted Moxon, but because the fit is loose. The bronze bushing together with the oversized 7/8 recommended through hole, which allows jaws to be laterally non-parallel, also means that the jaws can flop vertically, and they do just that because the bushing is not centered in the vise jaws. So you can't clamp something just at the top of the Moxon jaws, because they splay. On top of that, it is a delicate and error-prone operation to drill 3 sizes of concentric holes from opposite sides of the outer jaw on a drill press ( 1" for bronze bushing, hole on reverse side to house the spring, 7/8 hole through the center for the threaded rods.) Expecting a Forstner to accurately follow a pilot hole is an iffy proposition that depends on drill press runout, quality and design of Forstner, size of Forstner lead spur interacting with size of pilot hole, skill and some luck. But in the end you have a sloppy vise thread, an oversized threaded rod hole, a bushing on only one side of the outer jaw so it sags, and a spring housed in a hole that might not have perfectly smooth sides so the wheels don't spin super well. I am going to keep using it, but I will replace the bushing, remove the threaded knob and the spring, and probably make a new outer jaw. Having happily used the Benchcrafted Moxon in a shop from a decade ago, I can't really recommend anything about this one.
Easy to use and looks amazing! Great kit for a custom moxon vise. Great one day build!
