Benchcrafted Crisscross 14

Product Description

The Benchcrafted Crisscross completely transforms any leg vice into an effortless experience. Fully supporting the weight of the chop, the vice hardware, and its own weight, the Crisscross floats in and out on steel pins and bearing plates, giving a virtually weightless, friction-free action to the vice. The mechanism automatically adjusts through the range of your vice’s capacity to any workpiece thickness.

A popular mechanism for maintaining parallelism in vice jaws began to surface in the American patent record in the mid 19th century. There are also examples of this mechanism published in the La Forge Royale catalogue, Paris, late 19th to early 20th c.

This mechanism features two castings, equal in length and joined in the middle to create a pivot. The upper ends of the arms are fastened to the bench’s leg and the chop and are free to rotate on their mounts.The resulting mechanism completely eliminates the need for a traditional parallel-guide and pin arrangement.

Although the mechanism was never given a specific name, in modern times it has become known as the “St. Peter’s Cross”, a name taken from an early 20th c. publication describing it as such. During the development stages, Benchcrafted found several extant examples of the St. Peter’s Cross, and used them to prototype their version, the Benchcrafted Crisscross.

Versatility

The Crisscross can be installed into new benches, or retro-fit to benches with existing, parallel-guide equipped leg vices. It can also be used to build accessory vises with any vice hardware, such as a full-size high leg vice for detail work.

Made from cold rolled steel with a lightly oiled finish.

BenchCrafted developed the Crisscross 14 to fit in benches that are shorter than 30″ high, as the mortice required is only 14¼” long, versus 19½” long for the Crisscross Solo or Retro, but the Crisscross 14 will work in any size bench. It is also ideal for the popular Moravian bench design popularized by Will Myers, which uses a shorter leg than typical French style benches. The Crisscross 14 mounts to your bench or vice the same way as the Crisscross Solo.

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