Here's the starting point for our new line of furniture for the Design Lab show at the Denver Art Museum—a speed handle for a vise. Yes, a very simple beginning. It's meant to make the act of opening and closing a vise (to hold a piece of material securely in jaws so it can be precisely machined with a mill or a lathe or the like) quicker and easier than it would be with a single-arm handle. This one happens to be manufactured by a company called Kurt. It's a fairly typical design for this type of handle, though it's better built and handsomer than most. Our version is quite a bit different, of course, but more on that in later posts.