Show us your vertical clamping methods!

There seems to be plenty of interest in vertical clamping of stock for end grain joinery.

Certainly, the brain trust of this forum has a lot of creativity - please post pics of YOUR table mods for the vertical clamping of boards. Thanks!

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Here’s my setup. Allows for 4" vertical in the Y-axis and 27.5" in the X-axis with boards up to about 34" long. Everything is permanent/in place.

Dog holes are for repeatable piece alignment. T-tracks for clamping. I’ve only done a few test projects but the setup is working ok so far. I will probably make some clamping changes in the future.

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Hey Mike,

Search term was “vertical”

I watched these efforts regarding vertical workholding with admiring enthusiasm. I found many of these implementations very impressive, or what do you think?

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thanks for pulling these together.

I intended this thread to (hopefully) be a one-stop shop for vertical clamping ideas. I’d guess there may be several more designs that have not been posted yet, and this could provide a landing pad for those additional designs…

I have this video bookmarked as an example of vertical work holding. It is for an AvidCNC, but the owner has an innovative design with respect to the attachment locations and options for clamps and stops. I like the way he explains how he overcame some of the challenges along the way. Skip to the half way mark (~15 min) if you are not interested in how he sets up his horizontal table/waste board system.
Horizontal and Vertical table on an AvidCNC

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I’ve always liked Jay’s design talents. He expands here on the original design by Frank Howarth (Vertical CNC Table and New Spoil Board - YouTube). In both cases, these guys have massively framed CNCs, and can “afford” (space, money) to add some additional (and robust) aluminum extrusions. I, like you, are looking at ways to “scale down” what they’ve done at a reasonable cost both in money and space. Thanks for the post.

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I agree. At least all of these ideas provide opportunity for adaptation to our foot print and needs (budget, space,…) I do like the geometry of his dog holes.

Hey Mike,

in this forum there has always been the approach of summarizing everything on one topic in one thread. But that only worked for a few:

For other attempts, some were followed for a certain time, e.g.

but the topics have been restarted in many new threads and the valuable information is
scattered across many posts. This means that for the topics Spindle, VFD, Huanyang, Drag Chain, Table, Enclosure, Tool change, Automatic Tool Changer, ATC, Laser, and Vertical there is a myriad of postings. That’s why one can say, the goal of bundling certain topics that interest many users hardly works.

I suggest to use “Bookmark” functionality of this forum (hidden behind the little three dots at the bottom of a posting) to collect valuable information.

Among those that I bookmarked are these that I like:

Anyway I wish you good luck with your new thread!

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I made a fixture that can mount under your table.



It has holes placed to mount to a QCW frame but it is not necessary to have one, you could easily mount it to the underside of your table in any pattern you like. Use your CNC to cut through your waste-board and line it up from underneath. The surface has a t-track pocket along with threaded insert holes and dog holes for various mounting and alignment options. A downloadable dxf and .crv file can be found here

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I made this table so i could use vertical clamping when i wanted to especially for dovetails and box joints and even loose tenons. I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.


I hope this helps someone. I used a modified design of a moxon vice but with this one only the jaw moves so the screws stay in place and don’t hang out past the front of the table which I made of 4x4 left over from my outdoor kitchen build, I got the handles and acme threaded rod and nuts on amazon. all the 4x4’s were straightened on a jointer and then planed down so they were all the same size and square. and i put the whole thing on double locking casters so i could move it around my small shop. the vice jaw is made of 8 quarter rock maple and the mounting board has a fence to be able to quickly put the stock in straight. I put a dust groove in the fence as you can see

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ok more pictures of table with vertical holding.
actually holding something. perfectly square to the (still in the future any day now) onefinity journeyman.

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and here it is with it’s trap door in place now all I need to do is get the JM in and set up everything else . spoil board. keyways drag chains…etc.etc.etc.

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Here is a sketch of the acme modified moxon vice setup I hope it explains things better.

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This is great. I was considering something parallel to the front of the table. It never even occurred to me to have it parallel to the t-tracks! And it’s a lot better for space saving underneath. Thanks!

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you are very welcome. enjoy your work

Late to the party - don’t even have my machine yet, but I plan on doing something similar to @Dakotah above by making use of the spacing on the QCW frame w/ legs. I came across some optical breadboard and precise angle brackets by Base Lab Tools (https://www.baselabtools.com/Standard_c_289.html). The breadboard is essentially 1/2" solid aluminum with pre-tapped threads. Probably overkill for this sort of thing, but rigid, ready out-of-the-box, and not too expensive…

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I’m a little confused….

I see the picture and understand the concept and think it is a great idea.

I look at the link and it gives me a bunch of items which I assume is aluminum for the vertical work hold but do not know the size needed

I also looked for the STUDIO TOIYABE wasteboard layout and could not find anything.

I guess what I am trying to say is - is that if you have any links, concepts, ideas, plans related to this I would really enjoy looking into this in greater depth

Thanks in advance

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Hey @DaddyDan, I am “Studio Toiyabe,” hence the watermark. I don’t have plans to sell my wasteboard file just yet, as I don’t have the Woodworker to test them on. I could give you the vector file to demo if interested.

As for the link, that’s the company that makes the optical breadboard (scientific equipment) and angle brackets that I intend to use. My design above uses a 6”x36” breadboard, but they make them larger/smaller depending on your needs.

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Got it thanks!!!

Sorry if I sounded rude, wasn’t meant to be rude in any way. I ordered the elite Foreman back on the day it was first released.

I know nothing about CNC so I ordered the stand as well and as I was looking around on the forum I liked the idea of what you proposed and think that maybe Onefinity should look at the same idea.

Once you have a plan I would be very interested in buying. I definitely want this added to my machine as well

Thank you for the information.

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Didn’t come across as rude at all. I’m just now ordering an Elite Woodworker myself, so it will probably be the summer before I can test this out. Let me know when you get yours, and I can help you set up a vertical mount like this. I honestly don’t know if I’ll bother selling the layout file, as there’s nothing too novel at work here - just a 1-inch grid with a 3"x24" slot for the vertical section.