New Vise Chop

 Today I took a little time to replace the chop on my vise.  Now it's a full 3 1/8" thick (slightly more than twice as thick as before), and I decided to leave it just shy of 8" wide all the way to the floor.  This chop is made from some species of Maple, probably "soft Maple" as I've heard it called.  It has an ever-so-slightly sprung inner face, almost not detectable.  The wood is still semi-green, so I glued the wood up to fight itself if it moves, the goal of which is to keep it stable dimensionally.  Hopefully the Gorilla Glue won't let go! 

You can also see the full length planing stop that I made from some Yellow Pine.  My other planing stop is about 2 feet long, and scrub-planing anything longer was nearly impossible.  My new stop limits the width of my bench top to 8 inches, but I rarely-if-ever need to plane anything wider, and of course it's removable (secured in place with 3/4 inch dowels).

You can see my old sissy vise chop below, made from a 2x6 Doug Fir.  I had to set the parallel guide a full inch more than the stock thickness, so that when the wood bowed to give full contact, I would have sufficient pressure.  There shouldn't be any such issues with the new chop.  For a quick test, I clamped up a piece of 6/4" Curly Maple about 3 feet long in the vise and jointed one edge, no signs of slipping at all.