What’s the Deal with Benchdog Holes?

You may have seen work benches or assembly tables or a variety of different things in shops that have holes in them. More specifically, these are dog holes and if you're not familiar with the benefit of these, you are missing out, there's a bunch of different stuff that can happen with dog holes in your bunch. Couple of qualifiers, one, these are three quarter inch dog holes. You can also do 19 millimeter. I've seen 24 millimeter stuff. So when you're putting do go in and when you're buying accessories to do like the things I'm about to show you, you gotta make sure everything plays nice with each other. So you gotta make sure your uniform and your dog hole size. It's not uncommon that if you've got a V, it might be configured like this. Where in this wooden jaw, there are 23 quarter inch holes that'll take these steps, that'll accept these dogs. Alternatively, you might have more of a traditional woodworking vice where in the middle of the vice, there's a metal thingy that you can pull up. That's your dog. That's your vice dog when it's over here. That's a bench dog but when it's here, that's your vice dog. So either way, what that's giving me is something that I can use this like a clamp, which is, I can open my vice. I can get another dog because every dog has its day. I can figure out where this needs to be like right there. And then when I close the vice, I've got pressure on this piece. It's trapped here so I could belt sand it, I could hand plane it, I could carve it. So that's one thing we can do one way we can take advantage of the dogs. Now, don't be worried if you don't have a vice, but you want some of the benefits that I'm gonna show you, you can still do this. So let's say all we've got are holes in the table. There are a couple of ways, a couple of workarounds. One is we can get a dog that looks like that, which is basically like adding a vice to your bench. So if I do a dog there and I do this adjustable dog there, when I turn this, I can advance or retract that jaw so I could be squeezing something I could be squeezing something between these two. So this gives me the benefit of advice. A little more awkward to use because it's I have to do this, but it's way better than nothing. The other thing in a similar vein, if I do it there and I do that. There companies like Craig make devices like this that'll adjust and same deal that's gonna put lateral pressure on that up against that stop. So now I've got that piece held in place. There companies like armor make devices like this same concept, different approach, boom, boom. So that'll give me that lateral pressure again, similar to what a vice would do but quick acting like that, all of that stuff is about lateral pressure. What about vertical pressure? We can get clamps like this. This is a Bessie product or I can do that, that, that and that gives me hold down pressure, another armor product similar to the Bessie. We just looked at this, this and I've got that clamp in place that way. How about a backstop? This is an also this is also an armor product, aluminum extrusion, these are adjustable so you can change them based on your spacing. Lets me do this, then I can do this. So again, if I was working on something where I needed a backstop backstop, a belt sander would be a great example of that. I could do this and then I could be working against that so that this isn't running away from me every time I go to machine it or I could be using this in conjunction with another dog hole so that I could put lateral pressure from one of those other devices. Another cool thing that plate which is in a round dog, which then you can do this, a magnetic base light. So it's a very, very versatile addition to any work table. It's especially versatile if you combine the dog holes here with a vice on the end. But like I said, don't feel like you have to have the vice because you've just seen like three bazillion things you can do in the absence of a vice to take advantage of the dog holes in the table. Make sure that you are matching the diameter of the hole to the outside diameter of the device so that, you know, they're going to play nice together.